[FFML] [SM] Drunkard's Walk S: Heart of Steel, Prologue and Chapter 1

[Bob Schroeck]

Good evening everyone!  I've just completed the second chapter of
the "Sailor Moon" installment of my "Drunkard's Walk" series, and
in preparing to send it to the list, I discovered that I apparently
had never sent the first chapter when I released it almost a year
ago.

So, a treat for those of you who care and don't hang out in my
forums (and thus have already seen them):  two chapters in a row
for my newest story.

Chapter 1 is below; chapter 2 will follow in a separate posting.
Enjoy.

-- Bob

===========================================================================
Bob Schroeck         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net        rms at eclipse.net
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Disclaimer and credits will be found after the end of the
chapter.




                DRUNKARD'S WALK S:  HEART OF STEEL

                       by Robert M. Schroeck



0.  Time Lost and Forgotten

Stand and fight,
Live by your heart.
Always one more try.
I'm not afraid to die.
Stand and fight,
Say what you feel --
Born with a heart of steel.
-- Manowar, "Heart of Steel"

Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for
love is strong as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up
like blazing fire, fiercer than any flame.
-- Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)

And if the music stops,
There's only the sound of the rain.
All the hope and glory,
All the sacrifice in vain.
If love remains
Though everything is lost
We will pay the price
But we will not count the cost.
-- Rush, "Bravado"



My name is Douglas Quincy Sangnoir.  And I do not know how old I
am.

There are only two women in my life whom I have ever loved
wholeheartedly and unconditionally:  my wife Maggie, and my
adopted daughter Makoto.

And there are only two women in my life in whose service I would
willingly sacrifice my life:  Wetter Hexe, and Tsukino Usagi.

This is the story of why I no longer know my exact age.  It is
the story of how I became a mentor and teacher to the first
metahuman heroes to appear on their version of Earth.  It is the
story of how Makoto and Usagi took their places in my heart.  And
finally, it is also the story of how in the end I did in fact lay
down my life, in revenge for one and in the service of the other.

For twenty years I couldn't remember any of this.  For two
decades, all I could recall -- if I even thought about that
timeline at all -- was arriving on that Earth, and finding a song
to open a gate to the next world on my journey home less than 24
hours later.  Even now, with my memory allegedly restored, vast
swaths of my recollections are fuzzy, or riddled with holes.  If
it weren't for my usual journal entries -- which I found in my
helmet's computer, stashed in a hidden directory and locked with
my password -- I would have had even less idea of what happened
on that version of Earth than I do now.

I didn't seal those journal entries away myself -- as best as I
can reconstruct the events at the very end, I had no reason to do
so or even to anticipate needing to do so.  All I can imagine is
that when Usagi ordered the Ginzuishou to "put it all back",
whatever passes for the controlling intelligence of that magic
crystal golf ball decided to do it for me.

Why it didn't just wipe the log entries outright I'll never know.
Maybe it was afraid of what I'd do if I ever found out.

Maybe it was afraid of what *Usagi* would do.

There at the end, I might have been, too.



1.  A Sailor's Life For Me

You woke up this morning,
Got yourself a gun.
Mama always said you'd be
The Chosen One.
She said, "You're one in a million;
You've got to burn to shine.
But you were born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes."
-- Alabama 3, "Woke Up This Morning (Theme to 'The Sopranos')"

Does the crescent moon rise
By the light of your eyes?
Can you see the star that I'm wishing on?
And is it shining as bright
 From where you see it tonight
And does the love that you feel make you strong?
-- Blues Traveler, "12 Swords"

"There's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight."
-- Lon Chaney, Sr.



Monday, February 3, 1992, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Shiba Park, one block southeast of the Tokyo Tower, is an
interesting mix of terrains for its size.  Some of it is in the
style of a traditional city park, with manicured lawns and the
occasional small tree or bush.  Some of it is a Buddhist temple
and its well-kept grounds.  Much of it, though, is steep hillside
webbed with pathways and studded with larger, older trees and
underbrush, giving it a solid and unbroken forest canopy when
viewed from the upper floors of the high-rise luxury hotel
immediately adjacent to it.

Even in midwinter, the trees and other growth are thick enough to
obscure the center of the park's wooded section both from above
and from the park's outermost sections and drives; the height of
the hillside plus a massive retaining wall of ancient, dark stone
helps do the same for the view from the road that defines Shiba
Park's southern edge.  The hilly paths and slopes of the park
have no lights, making their depths all but impossible to see
after dark.  And after dark in midwinter there was no one in the
park to even try.

Thus when, one February night an hour after sunset, a pinpoint of
light appeared in midair over one of the more level sections near
the center of the park, and expanded to a disk of black ringed by
a rainbow, no one witnessed it, although traffic and pedestrians
streamed by only a few dozen meters away.  And no one noticed the
long, futuristic motorcycle that shot out from it, either, or the
unconscious man strapped to its saddle as it flew not quite half
a meter off the ground.

As the black-and-rainbow disk vanished behind it, the motorcycle
deftly avoided both the edge of a small cliff and a largish
outcropping of rock before coming to a halt, humming softly in
the dark.

                              * * *

I woke up in the cold and dark, amidst trees and rocks.  Nearby
traffic noise and a low-flying jet overhead reassured me that I
hadn't gated into the middle of a wilderness -- or worse, an
empty Earth.  After a few moments spent waking completely up and
shaking off my disorientation, I popped my helmet's headlamps and
looked around.  To my surprise, I actually recognized where I
was:  Shiba Park in Minato, Tokyo, just a couple of blocks from
Beta team's "embassy".  While I had never actually been formally
assigned to Beta, I had worked out of their headquarters in Tokyo
more than once.  Those times where I had been there for more than
a day or so, I'd visited Shiba Park to relax whenever I needed it
but didn't have time to do anything fancier or further away.

I thought about that for a moment, then engaged the stealth suite
and went vertical.

At about five hundred meters I stopped and hovered, slowly
turning in place to take in the entire vista.  It was more or
less the same Tokyo skyline I was used to.  There were a couple
buildings I didn't recognize, and a couple I expected to see that
weren't there.  So, probably not Homeline.  Just to make sure, I
drifted over to where Beta's HQ should be and found an office
tower instead of the Regency-style compound I was used to seeing
in that location.  Nope.  Not Homeline at all.

Damn.  But a man can hope, can't he?

And after 75-odd years of searching, would it be too much to ask
for?

Anyway, if you've been reading enough of these accounts of mine,
you should know the drill by this point.  I sold some of my trade
goods at a 24-hour pawn shop for enough cash to cover room and
board for a day or two.  I found a cheap place to crash in the
flophouse district in Sanya, about 16 kilometers north of
Akasaka, got a meal at an okonomiyaki-ya around the corner from
it, and then called it a night.

The next morning I grabbed some breakfast, then while everyone
else in Tokyo went to work or school, I headed back to Shiba Park
under full stealth.  I sat myself and my motorcycle in the center
of the little clearing where I woke up, and after zeroing out the
"tried" field in the table of candidates in my helmet's database
I picked the next song in the rotation and attempted to open a
gate to move on.

No luck, not that I expected to hit the right song on the first
try after all these years.  But I did learn from the feedback I
got that this was one of those universes where I needed to exit
from the same point where I arrived.  Which meant I needed to
find a place to live nearby until I found the right song.

(Well, okay, I didn't, not with my bike and its stealth suite.
But why travel any more than I had to?)

On my way back to my flop I picked up a couple of newspapers at a
newsstand, and found a bookstore where I could get a World
Almanac.  If I was going to be here longer than a day, I needed
once again to learn how to blend in with the locals.

Back at Chez Roach, I set the books and papers aside and went
through my supplies.  I didn't need to dig out any more trade
goods -- in a pleasant surprise, one of my stockpiles of Japanese
currency from a previous world turned out to be functionally
identical to the local cash.  Better yet, it came from a Japan
which had a more inflated economy than this timeline did, so not
only did I have a lot of it, it would go *much* further here.
But even with that advantage I still needed a job and a better
place to live, so I dug out an American passport and a few other
bits of paperwork I had left over from yet another timeline,
with which to begin the process of faking up a local identity.

I used what points of similarity there were between this world
and Homeline (not to mention all the *other* Japans in my
experience, which were on the whole a much better match to this
world) to find someone who could create a good fake ID.  This of
course meant dealing with the local Yakuza in the process.  I
was never really comfortable with that, but it was either deal
with the Minato-kai or get by without paperwork that would pass --
and I needed the paperwork.  It took a week and almost a quarter
of my cash on hand, but I got it.

In the meantime I began to familiarize myself with the local
history and current events, starting with the earthquake that had
struck Tokyo about 36 hours before my arrival.  No deaths and
only minor damage, but they still had need of clean-up crews --
for the first couple of days volunteering gave me something more
to do with myself than sit in my room and read history until my
fake ID was done.  It also kept me in contact with the Minato-kai,
who (true to the public image they liked to maintain) were
helping with the disaster relief.  And once every 24 hours I went
back to Shiba Park and tried to open a gate.

When the week was up and I had my newly-forged ID and
documentation, I was finally able to move out of the flophouse
where I had been staying.  It only took a couple of days to find
an unfurnished 12-jo 1K in Motoazabu whose landlord would rent to
a gaijin and which had off-street parking for my motorcycle.  The
off-street parking was actually harder to find than willingness
to rent to me (not that it was very hard at all); in this
timeline, like many others (but not at home), the Azabu area was
one of the neighborhoods popular with foreigners who lived and
worked in Tokyo.  As such it was far more multicultural than
other parts of the city, but it was also a fair bit more
expensive than, say, Nerima, Hiroo or Meguro.

At a little over 75,000 yen a month, my rent was a bit high but
not outrageous.  I was paying a higher base rate from just being
in Azabu, as well as a bit of a premium for being close to the
shopping district.  My place was in a newer apartment building of
the type called a "mansion" (and it was nowhere as luxurious as
that might make you think), which also added a bit to the price.
It helped my budget, though, that this version of Japan had been
in a recession for about two years at that point, and housing
prices had been coming down.

Six weeks later, I had a fully furnished apartment, a larger
library, a license on my motorcycle, a first-generation cell
phone, no luck in finding a gate out, and a job with a video game
development company that called itself "Hudson Soft" despite
their completely Japanese origin and management.  And my life had
settled down into a pleasant routine in which I rotated through
work, sleep, gate attempts, and appreciating life in this version
of Azabu by both day and night.

Naturally, it couldn't last.

                              * * *

Friday, March 20, 1992, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Aino Minako stood in front of her bedroom window and gazed out
blankly over the house across the street and lights of the
neighborhood beyond.  Nestled in her arms was a white cat with an
unusual mark on its head -- a golden crescent, points up, right
over its eyes.  It looked up at her with an uncommon intelligence
in its worried gaze as she absently stroked its fur.

"What do I do now, Artemis?" she murmured.  "The Dark Agency is
gone -- with Danburite defeated, they've completely vanished.
The only trace left of them is the normal people they had working
for them, and they're all out of jobs."

"The Enemy hasn't been permanently banished, Minako," the cat
replied.  It spoke in perfectly normal Japanese, its voice
improbably that of an adult human male.  "Sooner or later they'll
be back."

"I know, Artemis, I know," she replied, glancing down.  "But
until then?"

Artemis quirked his mouth into a very human smile.  "When I first
awoke your powers, I told you that you were to fight evil
wherever you found it.  The Enemy certainly isn't the only evil
in the world, you know."

Minako's melancholy evaporated as she visibly perked up.  "You're
right!  Even without the Dark Agency around the world still needs
Sailor V!"  She flung up her hand to point dramatically out the
window, and Artemis found himself unceremoniously dropped to the
floor. "Beware, evildoers!  The beautiful guardian Sailor V will
punish you!  For with great power comes great reprehensibility!"

"*Responsibility*, Mina-chan," Artemis muttered.

                              * * *

Monday, March 23, 1992, Tokyo Head Office of the *Asahi Shimbun*,
Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Jitsuha Yoshi ground out the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray
next to his keyboard, then retrieved and lit another.  As he took
a long, slow drag on it he leaned back in his chair and looked up
at the ceiling, pondering the future.  Two years of following
Sailor V's activities across the city -- and occasionally around
the world -- had resulted in a wildly popular series of articles
that had been profitable for both the newspaper and himself.

Yoshi knew he couldn't have stumbled across more than a fraction
of what she'd been up to, but what he had found and reported on
had been enough to resurrect his career from the dead end into
which it had been spiraling before 1990.  The Lifestyles section
was a slow death for a former war correspondent with twenty
years' experience, and not even the Americans' Gulf War had
rescued him.  But Sailor V *had*.

There had been *something* about a 12-year-old superheroine which
had fascinated the Japanese people, and they'd taken to her like
they had taken to Tetsuwan Atom or Tetsujin Nijuhachi-go.  More
than once he'd wished he could come up with a way to get a cut of
the profits from all the toys, manga and video games that had
exploited her image and her popularity, but most of the time he
was content with just having gone from Lifestyles crap back to
the front page.

That reminded him -- he never *had* found out who was behind that
Sailor V arcade game.  All he'd been able to determine was that
it hadn't been one of the big names.  He made a mental note to
start digging into that again.

Yoshi took another long drag of his cigarette and after holding
it for a moment blew the smoke back out in a long, thin jet that
reached the ceiling above his cubicle and spread out across the
acoustic tile.  He'd seen enough to know that Sailor V wasn't
out there just stopping muggers and perverts -- she'd also been
fighting *someone*, some kind of organization.  That much he'd
been able to deduce over the past two years, and more than once
he'd come tantalizingly close to finding out *who* they were and
what they were up to.

But something had changed just a couple of weeks ago.  Yoshi
wasn't sure what, but everything he could get from his street
contacts suggested it had been big.  For several weeks Sailor V's
general crimefighting -- and thus her usual newsworthy activities
-- had all but ceased.  But she'd still been briefly seen, here
and there, engaged in battles with an unknown opposition far
closer to her level than the usual street trash.  There wasn't
enough to really report on, but what there was suggested to him
that she may well have been fighting something akin to a war,
somewhere in the shadows.

And then... nothing.  She'd been seen, but the threat level of
her opposition was back down to the occasional mugger.

Could she have finally taken down her enemies, whoever they were?
The rumors and leads he'd collected pointed that way, but he
needed more to be sure.  And if he was right... well, he might
not have been able to unmask them while they had been active, but
nothing should stand in the way of that now.

He couldn't help but wonder, though -- if she really had finally
defeated her secret enemy, what was going to be next for Sailor
V?

                              * * *

Wednesday, March 25, 1992, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Tsukino Usagi lay on her stomach on her bed, her chin propped up
on her hands and her white-sock-clad feet kicking idly in the
air.  Spread out before her were half a dozen manga she had been
looking forward to reading now that the school year was over, but
she paid them no attention.  Hanami was here and according to the
sakura-zensen the best day for a picnic was only a week away!

She rolled onto her back and hugged herself as she imagined all
the great food her mom would make for their picnic.  She managed
not to squeal in delighted anticipation.  Hanami, and then ninth
grade, and then her birthday... and maybe she'd finally grow
taller than 150 centimeters, and get a boyfriend...  and then
she'd share stories about kissing him with Naru and they'd sigh
and...

This time she really did squeal.  This was going to be the best
year *ever*!

                              * * *

63rd Day of the Fifth Greater Cycle of Darkness in the 10,014th
Year of Exile, The Palace of Beryl, the Dark Kingdom

The chamber that served as the throne room of the once-human
being known as Queen Beryl, like many throne rooms over many
centuries, was large and intended to intimidate.  Unlike most of
its earthly counterparts, though, it was in no way ostentatious,
for its owner saw no need for displays of wealth or taste.  Not
when power was the only coin which she and her people valued.

In fact, the chamber was stark in its simplicity -- little more
than a dome-like cave in the blue rock of the Dark Kingdom, deep
below the stark and angular palace that sat upon the plateau in
which it was located.  She had excavated and finished it by the
application of her will and power ten millennia earlier,
intending it not as an audience chamber or a court, but as what
humans centuries later would come to call a parade ground:  a
place to hold all her subjects when she desired to inspect or
address them -- the tens of thousands of youma which had been
banished with her to this twilit half-world she had named the
Dark Kingdom.

There was only one entrance to the massive room, diametrically
opposite the raised dais on which rested the throne which Beryl
had sculpted for herself as a dark reflection of Serenity's long-
gone throne on the Moon.  The lines of its broad armrests looked
almost like natural flows of stone, but the immense, hideous
caricature surmounting it, with its bulging eyes and needle-like
teeth, was anything but.  Any who sought to approach it had to
cross the chamber's great expanse of floor along a path demarked
by tall slender pillars supporting pale glowing orbs that lit the
huge room, dwarfed by its size and always in the sight of the
throne's occupant.

On that dark throne sat Queen Beryl, who had fought to free Earth
and its prince, Endymion, from the clutches of the Moon Kingdom,
and had been rewarded for her success with exile.  In one hand
she held the slender shaft of her scepter, in which was mounted
her obsidian scrying stone.  Often the scepter floated before her
as she gazed into the stone's depths, watching over her subjects
and ensuring their loyalty, but at this moment other matters
concerned her.

Forming a ring along the edges of the great dome this day were
her most elite combat forces, twelve companies of hunter-killer
youma, in loose ranks five deep.  They were as well-disciplined
as youma could be, which was far less than equally elite human
troops would have been, Beryl had to admit to herself.  But what
they may have lacked in decorum they more than made up for in
their savagery in combat.  Millennia of pitting them against one
another had not only maintained their prowess, but had honed it
to a razor's edge -- a necessity given the realities of the day.
Ten thousand years earlier, Beryl had had millions of the demonic
creatures under her command, enough to overwhelm the forces of
both Earth and the rest of the Solar System combined.  Despite
how skilled and powerful humanity's defenders had been, they had
been defeated by sheer weight of numbers.

Even ten millennia ago, quantity had had a quality all its own.

But though her attack on the Moon Kingdom and the whores who had
ruled it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, the cost to her
forces had been immense.  And when that bitch Serenity's final
strike had blasted her into this interstitial hellhole of a
pocket dimension, only a bare fraction of Beryl's surviving
forces had been carried along with her.

Beryl took some dark pleasure in knowing that she had done so
much damage to the solar system that there had been no forces
left that could stand against the youma which had not been caught
up in the banishment.  It was almost the only pleasure she could
take at the memory, for her beloved Endymion had died defending
the harlot of a princess who had bewitched him, and the Earth
that should have been hers to rule had fallen like the rest of
the Solar System to the rampaging, unrestrained youma of her
abandoned armies.

But worst of all, despite ending the line of Serenity and utterly
destroying the Moon Kingdom and all its puppet states, she had
still been unable to fulfill her side of the bargain which had
gained her the forces with which she had accomplished all this.
At the very moment of complete victory, not only had Beryl and
her armies been banished into this prison world, but also
Metaria, the dark entity who had been her patron.  Metaria had
had its own reasons to see the Moon Kingdom fallen, but as long
as Beryl had Earth and Endymion she didn't care what they were.
It had been an alliance of mutual benefit.

But with their exile whatever benefit Metaria had sought to gain
from Beryl's campaign had been denied to it -- and it was most
displeased.  Or at least it had been, before a lack of energy had
forced it into torpor.  And Beryl's ambition to rule the Earth
with Endymion at her side had been similarly thwarted.  So, for
ten thousand years she had sat upon her throne, pitting her best
youma against each other to maintain their strength and their
edge, waiting for the chance to escape the prison she had made
into her Kingdom and return to the world that was hers by right
of conquest, there to finally complete the bargain she had made
with Metaria so long ago.

And that chance was now here.

This day four figures stood at attention before her, in the dress
uniform of a military force long dead:  severely-cut jackets and
trousers that under Earth's sun would have shown their true
colors -- royal blue trimmed in red -- but under the shimmering
magelights of her throne room became a violet so pale it was
almost grey, trimmed with a brown-red precisely the color of
dried human blood.  These four men, the Shittenou, had been her
first successes, long ago when she had begun moving covertly
against the Moon Queen -- they had been the friends, advisors and
chief generals of her beloved Endymion, the Prince of Earth, and
with means both magical and mundane she had corrupted them and
turned them to her cause.  Even now, ten millennia later, their
loyalty to her had never wavered.

"What news, my generals?" Beryl demanded.

One -- the tallest of the four, with proud, aristocratic features
and gently curling brown hair that hung past his shoulders --
bowed to her.  "With your permission, Majesty?"

Beryl inclined her head toward him.  "Speak, Nephrite."

Nephrite stood up straight and brushed his hair back across his
shoulders.  "I have good news, Majesty.  Although Danburite's
defeat has resulted in the collapse of his 'Dark Agency', we no
longer need to rely on such subterfuge.  The stars have finally
aligned to favor us, and with the energy he gathered the passage
to the human world has been stabilized enough that it will allow
us to travel to Earth."  He gestured to himself and the other
three Shittenou.

"Go on," Beryl said.

"Now that it has," Nephrite continued, "we may finally go to the
human world in person and take immediate control of our
operations.  We can also bring more powerful youma through the
passage, and begin to act more directly.  It then becomes a self-
reinforcing cycle -- as we harvest more life energy, we can widen
the passage, permitting us to bring more youma through, with
which to gather more energy."  He offered a small smile that was
just shy of smug.  "Until the passage has finally been made large
enough and stable enough to allow all our forces to return to
Earth."

Beryl nodded slowly.  "Excellent news, Nephrite.  However, we
must not forget that we need energy to awaken and empower Metaria
as well.  We must dedicate to Metaria's revival every bit we
harvest which is not essential to maintaining and expanding the
path to the human world.  To this end, our forces there are to be
instructed to seek out the talisman of our ancient enemy -- the
Ginzuishou.  It had power enough to build an empire, and power
enough to seal us away when we had finally triumphed over its
wielder.  It will have more than enough to restore our great
ruler."  *And once we wake that monster up and get it back to
Earth, I can finally get myself free of that damned agreement,*
Beryl added silently.

"Indeed..."  Nephrite looked off into the distance as he
considered this.  "And it must be free for us to take, as our
agents within the human world report none who rule with its
power.  I would not have thought of that possibility, but yes,
the gem would seek out the worthy among the survivors on Earth
instead of lying dormant on the surface of the Moon."  He bowed
again.  "And who is worthier of its power than you, Majesty?"

"Who indeed?" she replied drily.  "Jadeite."

Another of the Shittenou stepped forward -- this one with short
blond hair and an arrogant sneer that vanished when he turned his
eyes to his queen.  "Yes, Your Majesty?"

She studied him with half-lidded eyes for a moment.  "Danburite
was your lieutenant.  Now that the way to Earth will permit your
passage, you will go immediately and take direct command of the
Asia-Pacific campaign."  Beryl almost smirked at the thought of
using the current era's name for the region.  She flicked her
glance, snakelike, over the other Shittenou.  "And you three as
well -- you have your responsibilities; I want you on Earth
guiding them personally from now on.  It is no longer sufficient
to leave these vital operations in the hands of your pitifully
weak underlings.  Sailor V has disrupted our efforts too many
times now -- she cannot be permitted to do so any further."

"Yes, your Majesty," the four chorused.

Beryl waved a hand.  "Go then.  You are dismissed."

The Shittenou bowed, then left the chamber.

As the youma ringing the room shifted restively in their ranks,
Beryl set her scepter floating before her and stared into the
reflections glinting off the inactive scrying sphere.  The Earth
on the other side of the passage was not the one she had known
ten thousand years earlier.  From the return of the first youma
scouts dispatched through it upon its discovery, that had been
obvious.

Oh, the map was the same -- Mu, Atalante, Hyperborea and the rest
of the continents were still more-or-less where they had been,
give or take a land-bridge or isthmus.  The ice caps were much
smaller, but that wasn't of any concern to Beryl -- she had
always liked the warmer climes anyway.

Yes, the map was the same -- but the civilizations squatting upon
it weren't.  The four great nations which had jointly formed the
Earth Kingdom at the height of the Silver Millennium -- the
nations she had sought to rule with Endymion at her side -- were
gone, replaced by a patchwork of several hundred squabbling
little states, constantly at each other's throats.  It was
perhaps too much to hope for that they would have been waiting in
anticipation of her return to take her rightful place as their
ruler, but the youma left behind had clearly done their jobs far
too well and destroyed *all* vestiges of civilization in the
solar system, instead of just *most* of them.

Oh well.  Still, the intelligence from Earth had required her to
alter her plans -- for the worse and better at the same time.
Conquering one tiny nation after another would be tedious, but it
would be easier to subvert and seize control of them one at a
time.  And their almost universal mutual antipathy would prevent
them from coming to one another's aid as she drove her forces
across the face of the globe.

Better yet, with the end of the great nations came the loss of
all knowledge of magic, leaving her Dark Kingdom the only
practitioners of that art left in the solar system.  And history
had long shown that when one side had magic and the other didn't,
the one that didn't always went down in defeat.  Always.

And once that was done, and Metaria had been satisfied and shown
the door, the Earth would be hers.  Forever.

Beryl began to chuckle to herself at the thought of the Earth at
her feet, then threw back her head and laughed loud and long.

                              * * *

Monday, March 30, 1992, Midtown Tower, Akasaka, Tokyo.

I made a profound discovery today.  This world had metahumans.

Well, *a* metahuman.

I was just getting into the office, about quarter of nine, and
my cubemate -- a fellow by the name of Soichiro -- was polishing
off a cup of tea while reading his morning paper.  "Good
morning!" I said with a smile as I set my briefcase on my desk
and opened it up.

"Good morning, Sangnoir-kun," Soichiro replied absently.  He held
up the paper and then asked, "Have you seen the news this
morning?  Sailor V's reappeared -- she stopped a robbery right
here in Akasaka last night."

I stopped unpacking my briefcase and looked at him.  "Sailor
who?"

He looked up from his tea and paper.  "Oh, that's right, you
haven't been in Japan for long -- you wouldn't've heard of her,
would you?  Sailor V is Tokyo's own super-powered crimefighter."

"You don't say," I replied with an innocently bemused expression
on my face.  Inside, though, I was going nuts -- nothing I'd read
in the past few weeks -- encyclopedias, the *World Almanac*,
nothing -- had mentioned anything that even *hinted* at the
presence of metahumans on this earth.  "Super-powers?  *Really*?"

Soichiro nodded vigorously.  "Oh yes!  She has some kind of
energy beam power, and she's faster and stronger than a grown
man, and oh!  Right!  There's pictures of her hopping from roof
to roof across the city."

Well.  That certainly *sounded* like a metahuman -- or maybe
someone with a good exoskeleton system.  "Wow.  Can I see your
paper when you're finished?"

"Sure.  Here," he said, folding it up and handing it to me.
"I'm done with it."

"Thanks," I murmured as I took it from him and then settled in
at my desk.  I unfolded it -- it was the morning edition of the
*Asahi Shimbun* -- and began to look for the article on this
"Sailor V".  I found it quickly enough -- front page, below the
fold -- and read it quickly.  Like Soichiro had said, she'd
foiled a robbery at a convenience store -- a 7-Eleven if you can
believe it, over near Shibakoen -- and then hung around long
enough to sign autographs and get some ice cream.  Almost as an
aside, the article mentioned that she'd dropped out of sight for
several weeks, with her last known appearance being not long
before I'd arrived.  Which explained why I hadn't heard of her
before now.

After going through the article twice, I spent some time studying
the black-and-white photo -- credited as a "stock" pic -- which
accompanied it.  It was a daytime action shot of a girl with hair
lighter than the Japanese norm, apparently in her early teens,
wearing an outfit resembling an abbreviated sailor-suit school
uniform mostly in blue and white; her face was far blurrier than
it should have been, even given her obvious movement when it was
taken.

Curious.

After work I ran over to the Akasaka Library, which was several
blocks and fifteen or so minutes' walk north-ish of Hudson Soft's
offices.  I grabbed a bite on the way, and then spent the next
couple of hours doing a dive through their back copies of the
*Asahi Shimbun* and a few other local periodicals.  All the Tokyo
papers acknowledged her activities, although some seemed to
disapprove of her, and at least one treated her like silly season
fodder.  However, between them all there were more than enough
photos -- as well as the occasional film or video footage -- to
verify that she did in fact exist, and that she probably wasn't a
hoax.

If she wasn't a hoax -- and I *have* come across a few over the
years and worlds -- then she had to be one of the youngest
metagifted vigilantes I'd ever seen.  The latest pics of her made
her look to be about 14, maybe 15 at the most, but the very first
news stories about her were from *two years* earlier -- and the
photos accompanying them showed a correspondingly younger Sailor
V, with more than a few comments on her youth.  Gods alone knew
how long she'd actually been operating before the news media had
noticed her.  Especially given the schoolgirl-fetish-look outfit
she wore, which made it pretty clear to me she wasn't using any
kind of power armor this world's bleeding edge tech could even
*imagine*.

The idea of a consistently successful and *competent* 12-year-old
metahuman vig completely boggled my mind.

And she wasn't just busting muggers and stick-up artists -- she'd
been spotted fighting ... *things* ... that were on the same
level as her, powerwise.  And she'd survived at least two years
at it.

Wow.

Oh, yeah, and she was doing all this more or less in the same
part of Tokyo that I'd chosen to live in.  What a co-inky-dink.

Bullshit.

It's "coincidences" like that which make me wonder if Marller and
her sisters are watching -- and manipulating -- my travels.

Anyway, while it was entirely possible that she was unique, a
one-off sport, I was willing to bet that there were or would be
others.  She might not even be the first in this world -- gods
knew Homeline had had the odd metahuman popping up here and there
for centuries (if not millennia) before the Metahuman Explosion
of 1929.  I couldn't help but wonder if I were in place to see
the start of a similar explosion in this world.

Part of me actually wanted to head out and try to find her.  I
don't know why -- maybe for the first chance I'd had in a while
to "talk shop" with another metahuman?  Who knows?  I quashed the
impulse when no really compelling reason made itself known to me.
Let the girl have her privacy.  Besides, what would I do?  Hover
over the city on my bike watching for her to appear on a rooftop?
Rig a spotlight to cast a "V" onto a cloud and wait for her to
investigate?  Let's be serious.

As I left the library and walked back to where I'd left my bike
parked at the Midtown Tower, I looked up to the night sky above
me, and tried to pick out a few stars.  But not even the narrow
crescent of the almost-new moon was visible between the office
towers and the light pollution of downtown Tokyo.  I sighed and
was about to give up entirely when I spotted a meteor, bright and
close-seeming, lancing down from the zenith to vanish behind the
artificial horizon of the skyscrapers.

For a moment I was tempted to make a wish on the falling star.
But I had only one wish, and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to
be granted any time soon.

                              * * *

Still half-dazed from the effects of suspended animation, Luna of
the Mau reflexively pawed the blinking panel.  With a gentle
hiss, the capsule in which she'd slept while orbiting the earth
for some ten thousand years opened like a flower around her.
Acting more from instinct than intelligence she stumbled out of
the capsule and staggered across the smoking patch of brush and
grass which surrounded it, stopping only when she had hidden
herself under a dense evergreen bush.  Only then did she turn
around to fix her red eyes on the battered and seared magical
construct which had carried her so far into the future.

As if waiting for the moment she looked at it, the capsule --
less a physical object than a coherent structure of magic --
finally released the last of its fading energy.  It vanished, and
a tiny shockwave of mystic power swept across the ground around
it, erasing the damage its arrival from space had wrought.  Luna
barely flinched when the magic rolled over and through her.  With
it came a voice in her mind, a voice she knew well and, from her
point of view, had last heard only a few minutes before:

*Find my daughter in her new life.  Find my Guardians in theirs.
Make sure they're ready.  The seal I placed on the Great Enemy
will not last forever.  I have arranged for you, my trusted
adviser, to arrive near where they will be reborn, at least a
decade before I expect the seal to break.  This will give you the
time to locate and train them.  Goodbye, dear Luna, I have the
greatest faith in you.*

*That's right,* Luna fuzzily recalled.  *That's why I'm here.  To
find the Princess.*  The black cat turned and began to make her
way carefully through the underbrush, carried forward by the
importance of her mission.  "Find the Princess," she repeated
aloud, then froze in place as a horrible realization came upon
her.

"Find the Princess.  But..."  She looked up plaintively at the
moonless sky.  "I can't remember what she looks like!" she
yowled.

                              * * *

Several hours later, Luna had found herself both shelter and
food, and had had time to consider her situation.  While it
wasn't *quite* the worst-case scenario -- that would have been a
toss-up between not having survived at all and arriving *after*
the seal on the Enemy's prison had begun giving way -- it
certainly wasn't anywhere close to ideal.  At least the capsule
had properly implanted the local language -- "Japanese", it was
called -- in her mind, judging by the bits of conversations she'd
overheard while skulking through the utterly alien city in which
she'd landed.

Sadly, that may have been the only positive in matters as they
now stood.  To her stunned horror, Luna had discovered that the
Princess's face wasn't the only thing she couldn't remember.
There were gaps in her memory -- terrifyingly large ones where
entire swaths of her life had seemingly been erased.  Other parts
had been rendered foggy and indistinct, devoid of anything more
than the odd detail, which wasn't much better.

There was no doubt it was the result of enduring coldsleep for
thousands of years longer than anyone else she'd ever heard of.
Luna could remember the Queen, thank the gods, and the charge
she'd been given.  She could remember the Great Enemy in broad
strokes -- their composition, their abilities, their weaknesses --
but their leadership, which she *should* have known, was a blank.

Worryingly, the Royal Guardians were almost as much of a blank to
her.  Luna was fairly certain she'd recognize them upon
encountering them, but trying to recall anything specific now
seemed doomed to failure; at best she could pull up a hazy image
of a uniform or a hair style.  Complicating matters, she couldn't
even remember exactly how many there were -- surely there had
been one for each inhabited world, but in her damaged
recollections the numbers never seemed to tally up right.  Five?
Eight?  Eleven?  When she checked she found only a handful of
empowerment items in her storage space, along with several other
artifacts of varying power, but she was certain there had been
more Royal Guardians than that.  Had the number of Guardians
sworn to the Queen changed during Luna's lifetime and she just
couldn't remember?  Could she not have empowerment items for all
the Guardians who had been sent forward?

That thought panicked her for a moment.  Without a custom
catalyst to carry a Royal Guardian through her initial levels of
empowerment, she would be little more than a normal human.
Otherwise it would take a mage on the order of the Queen's power
to wake them to their potential.  And if her perambulations over
the past few hours were any indication, one thing this strange
future world seemed to lack was mages of *any* power at all.

Compulsively, she rechecked her storage space.  The selection was
the same, and just random enough to make her wonder if she'd lost
any of its contents during her long sleep.  Wands for Mercury,
Mars and Jupiter -- if, as seemed possible from the set, the
Royal Guardians represented only the inner planets, why didn't
she have wands for Venus or Earth?  They were planets, too.  And
the Moon-themed brooch -- that had to be for the Moon's Guardian,
right?

Something about that last conclusion bothered her, but she
dismissed her misgivings as the product of her damaged memory.
Of *course* the Moon had had a Guardian of its own.  It was --
had been -- the greatest political and magical power in the Solar
System.  How could it *not* have had its own Royal Guardian?

There in the dry drainpipe in which she had taken shelter for the
night, Luna nodded decisively to herself.  Yes.  And the Moon's
Guardian was *of course* the leader of the entire team, as would
be dictated by the Moon's prominence in the Solar System and
indicated by the unique empowerment brooch in her cache.  It
would be she whom Luna would seek out first.  And with her help
they would find the other Royal Guardians, and then... the
princess.

"Sailor Moon," Luna whispered, the sound of the title in the
modern human language strange and unfamiliar on her lips, "I
*will* find you."

                              * * *

Tuesday, March 31, 1992

Luna woke from a fitful, nightmare-wracked sleep, stretched, and
ventured out of the drainpipe.  Her stomach reminded her that she
hadn't had anything to eat since scavenging some familiar-
smelling fish from a garbage bin early the previous evening.
*I'll need to get something to eat, but first things first --
locate the Moon's Guardian.  Once I know in which direction to
search, I can find a breakfast on my way.*

Luna had held many roles in Serenity's court over the years --
political adviser, etiquette instructor, even an admiral of the
fleets for a while -- but one thing she wasn't was a mage.  Even
so, she had a good layman's working knowledge of magic, enough to
perform a simple scan.

Luna cautiously padded out into the culvert onto which the
drainpipe opened, keeping an eye out for both unwanted observers
and possible predators.  Once she had an unobstructed view of the
sky above she stopped and closed her eyes before opening her mage
senses.

With a screech she slammed them shut a moment later, and dashed
back into the drainpipe, where she sat shivering for several
minutes before she could form a coherent thought again.

*The Enemy -- they're here already!*

The traces were faint and indistinct, but they were everywhere,
in every direction -- youma were in this city *now*, and had been
for weeks, maybe even months.  Long enough that the cumulative
effect of their presence on the local magic field was strong
enough to blur their exact positions.  How had Her Majesty made
such a critical error?

Logic asserted itself a moment later as Luna began to recover
from the shock.  From the perspective of ten thousand years ago,
Queen Serenity's assessment of the lifespan of the seal on the
Enemy was eerily accurate -- and her targeting of Luna's arrival
had been almost as accurate; she'd arrived at practically the
moment it had failed.  However, from the view of Luna's mission,
it had been horribly *wrong*.  Instead of a decade, she now had
at most a few months to take an undisciplined band of completely
untrained young women and turn them into a squad of magical
warriors.

*Oh, dear gods.*  Luna was suddenly seized by a terrifying
thought.  *What if *my* arrival isn't the only thing that's been
mistimed?  What if the Royal Guardians are too young to train?
What if they're infants still?  What if they're in their
dotages?*

At least they were here and alive.  That much she'd been able to
determine in the moments before she'd realized what the dark
taint on the area's energies meant.  Somewhere to the south of
her were at least four auras of profound power, maybe more.  It
was hard for her to be certain at that range, but she was sure
there were at least three good candidates for reincarnated Royal
Guardians.  Two of the auras were especially powerful -- enough
to partly obscure the weaker signatures in their vicinity.  One
tasted clearly of Moon power -- it had to be Sailor Moon.  The
other, though... it was different from the rest.  A mage of some
sort, to be sure -- and the first evidence she'd seen that this
future world had any magic users at all -- but not a Guardian.

Luna dismissed the mage.  The aura lacked any kind of dark taint,
so they were unaffiliated with the youma.  The part of her mind
honed by her years as an admiral suggested it might be a
potential ally, but she viciously suppressed the impulse.  She
didn't have the time to vet and groom an unknown into a trusted
ally, not in a city and world that was utterly alien to her.  The
only forces she could be sure of were those who originated in the
Silver Millennium.  And speaking of which...

She took a long, deep breath, steeled herself, and crept out of
the drainpipe.  Somewhere to the south was Sailor Moon.  And Luna
*would* find her.

                              * * *

Minako dropped to the ground at the end of the alleyway and
released her transformation.  Then she spread her arms, spun
about and laughed for the sheer joy of it.

"Did you enjoy chasing off a jewel thief that much, Mina-chan?"
Artemis asked after making his way down to ground level after
her.

She turned a broad, almost manic grin on the white cat.  "C'mon,
Artemis, weren't you the one telling me to defeat ordinary human
evil?  After fighting the Dark Agency for all these months,
getting to beat up ordinary crooks is like a vacation.  Or a
game, even!"

Artemis frowned minutely.  "Don't forget that the Enemy is still
out there.  Just because the Dark Agency is destroyed, don't
think they're defeated."

Minako rolled her eyes.  "Of course I know they're still out
there.  You don't stop reminding me!  But I'll worry about them
when they come back out of whatever dark little hole they're
hiding in."  She spun around and laughed again.  "Hiding because
the utterly amazing Sailor V kicked their butts harder than
anyone has ever kicked butts before!"

"Mina-chan!" the cat scolded.

"Oh, lighten up, Artemis!"  Minako strode confidently out toward
the street.  As she stepped out of the alley, she very carefully
didn't think about Phantom Ace, with whom she'd fallen in love,
and the heartbreak of discovering he was really Danburite, the
leader of the Dark Agency.  Or about the curse he had claimed was
upon her.  Thinking that way led to crying at midnight, and
depression, and all kinds of other nasty, icky things that a good
hero didn't do.

Instead Minako focused on how much more fun things had become
since then.  Smacking down a mugger here or stopping a hold-up
there, it was a welcome respite.  Even something like tonight,
where she'd fought an unusually capable thief to a standstill
while thwarting his attempt to rob a jewelry store, was more
exhilarating than exhausting.

"So what was up with that guy, anyway, Artemis?" she asked as she
looked up and down the street.  "What kind of thief goes around
in a tuxedo and top hat, wearing a mask?  Well, actually, a mask
makes sense for a crook, for the same reason I wear one.  But
criminals shouldn't be as smart as heroes.  And they shouldn't
wear formalwear to their crimes.  That's just silly."

"Yes, Mina-chan."  The cat gave a long-suffering sigh.  Minako
glanced down at him and grinned before stopping in front of a
convenience store.

She deserved a reward, and there was no better reward than ice
cream.

                              * * *

Wednesday, April 1, 1992, 8:21 AM

Luna yowled in outrage as the band of small boys held her down.
She felt more than saw the bandages they placed over Serenity's
Mark, the golden crescent moon upon her forehead; in the last
moments before her command of human language was stripped from
her, she caught enough of their babble to realize that they had
mistaken it for a wound.

There was a shout, and she was released.  Dazed and disoriented,
Luna shook her head and tried to gather her thoughts.  She heard
a female voice, and then a Presence surrounded her.  Power and
magic and purity, all so intense that Luna did not need to force
her mage senses open to detect it.  Overwhelmed to the point that
even her physical senses were clouded with its strength, Luna
froze long enough for the Presence to scoop her up, at which she
panicked and struggled in its grip.

There was a painful pull upon the fur of her head, and then
Serenity's Mark was revealed once more.  The power of human
language came rushing back into her mind, and with it also came
the realization that she *knew* this impossibly powerful aura.

Luna went still and stared into huge blue eyes, surrounded by
blonde hair.

It was her.

Sailor Moon.

Luna twisted, dropped, and then leaped to the top of a nearby car
to study the girl for a few moments.  *She looks to be in her
early teens... Not ideal -- it would've been better if she'd been
a bit younger -- but it's far better than the alternative.*  She
spun about and ran off, leaving the surprised girl blinking in
her wake.  *I'm going to need a better understanding of her daily
life and obligations,* Luna thought as she dashed along the
streets.  *I'll have to work around family, and school, and
Serenity knows what else.  I'll need a couple more days to
observe her, and to get a better feel for this city and this
culture, before I approach her.*

As she slowed Luna began to pay attention to her surroundings.
*I'll also need somewhere closer to shelter for the night.*

                              * * *

Wednesday, April 1, 1992, 10:50 AM

I was hip-deep in laying out the graphics for the third-stage
midlevel boss of "Soldier Blade" when I felt it -- a pulse of
distant magic.  And not happy flowers-and-puppies magic, but
something so dark I could all but feel the taint of it dripping
like sludge off it and onto me.  I stopped my coding and
concentrated on the sensation, which had already peaked and was
starting to fade.  It felt like a transit effect of some sort,
either a teleport or a gate, and it was still strong enough that
I could get a general bearing on it -- not quite south, not quite
south-southwest, but somewhere in between.

I grimaced as the pulse finished fading away to nothing.  That
was pretty much the direction in which my apartment building lay.
Knowing my luck (not to mention the complete lack of coincidences
in my life, thanks to certain Fate-shaped entities who claim to
like me), whatever had caused that pulse would end up being
practically on my front step.  And it wasn't going to be good,
not with that sensation of utter filth that had laced it.  As for
what had caused it, my best guess was that whatever Sailor V's
non-human opposition had been, they were back after taking a
break for a few weeks.

Assuming that they hadn't just gated in Godzilla or its demonic
cousin, I was going to have to walk around the neighborhood
tonight looking for nasties.

Joy.

                              * * *

The wave of dark magic almost knocked Luna out of her perch in a
tree by the school building where Sailor Moon was currently
napping in class.  *The Enemy!  They're moving!* she thought as
she shot up from where she had laid sprawled in the fork of a
branch, then scrambled to keep from falling.  By the time she'd
recovered, the wave had passed, and she had no idea what
direction it had come from.  But it had been close... somewhere
within five kilometers or so, no more, she was sure of it.  All
the more reason to approach and awaken Sailor Moon.

Luna shot a disapproving look at the girl who was gently snoring
even as her teacher loomed threateningly over her.  Hopefully she
would be more interested in magic and combat than academics.

                              * * *

Thursday, April 2, 1992, 6:05 PM

"I'm home!" he called out as he closed the door behind him and
listened to it latch shut in the quiet of the house.  As he
removed his shoes and put on his slippers, he heard her soft
footsteps down the hall.

"Papa!" his daughter cried and held out her arms to him.  He
hopped lightly up the stairs into the hall proper and wrapped her
slight, sickly frame in his embrace.  "And how is my little
firefly?" he murmured into her hair as he kissed the top of her
head.

"Better now that you're home," she mumbled into his chest.

"Don't forget, Daddy's still working on making you well,"
Souichi Tomoe earnestly promised.  He pushed his glasses up onto
the bridge of his nose, sending a glint of reflected light around
the hall.  In just a few more weeks, he would be able to summon
Mistress Nine to merge with Hotaru.  He resisted the urge to
burst into maniacal laughter, settling for sharing a toothy grin
with Kaolinite, who had closely followed behind the child.

Just a few more weeks.

                              * * *

Friday, April 3, 1992, 7:50 PM

After so many years in so many different versions of Japan, I am
equally comfortable with both Western and Japanese furnishings.
As a result, the decor of my apartment was a somewhat random mix
of both, encouraged both by the way the building catered to
Westerners and by the eclectic, multicultural mix of stores in
the Azabujuban shopping district just a few blocks away.

This meant I had both a kotatsu and a comfortable armchair (two,
in fact), and even a beanbag chair which I kept slung into a
corner until it was needed.  I'd actually had a few co-workers
over already, so it wasn't like I was just buying furniture to
look at -- I had entertained (once), which as far as I was
concerned justified the purchase.

Anyway, TGIF and I was settling into my armchair with a book
after cleaning up from a satisfying meal made up of leftovers
from dinners earlier in the week.  I'd been in this world now for
two months, and had given in to the temptation to start getting
comfortable.  I might find a gate song tomorrow or ten months
from now, but there's no reason I shouldn't relax until then.

Of course, it would be better if the world had no meta-level
threats, but you can't have everything.  Whatever had caused that
pulse of tainted magic two days earlier hadn't shown its head
since then, but I figured it was only a matter of time.  I had
spent Wednesday evening walking around the shopping district --
my best guess for its "ground zero" -- but the pulse had left
enough of a residue behind that the "background count" made it
impossible to pinpoint its origin.  It was fading away slowly,
but for the moment it would obscure anything but the most
powerful workings -- at least as long as I was right in the thick
of it.

So I'd grabbed some takeout, made a detour around a jewelry store
holding a sale that made Filene's Running of the Brides look
sedate, and headed home for the night.  Sooner or later, whoever
it was would do something that I could trace, and I'd be there to
see if I needed to stomp on their heads.

Naturally, something happened the moment I settled down with a
good book.  Two somethings, in fact:  equal and opposite bursts
of light and dark magic in Azabu, some distance apart.  The light
was practically an explosion, the wavefront emitted by a powerful
transformation/empowerment effect that suddenly blossomed and
slammed into me even with my mage senses closed; it vanished so
quickly that I couldn't get my mage sight up fast enough to read
more than the most general bearing on it.  But at almost the same
moment that dark magic had welled up -- a slower, longer effect
but no less powerful than the light.  I set the light magic aside
for the moment to focus on the dark.

There.  The shopping district, practically on top of the train
station.

"Got you, you bastard," I murmured as I dove for the cabinet
where I kept my armor and my uniform.

Seven minutes later I was on my bike and launching vertically out
of the parking lot behind my building, not caring if anyone
spotted me.

It took less than a minute more to find myself homing in on that
jewelry store I'd avoided on Wednesday.  Even without my mage
sight up, at this range I could *feel* the dark magic like sewage
flowing over my skin.  It stank of something akin to a blend of
domination, necromancy, and vampirism.  I gritted my teeth, set
the bike's autopilot to take it up a couple hundred feet, and
leapt into an open window on the store's second floor.  (And
whoever left that window open?  They should get fired.  They
might as well have put up a sign reading "please rob us!")

                              * * *

Tuxedo Mask had awakened, as always, to find himself bounding
across the rooftops of the city, drawn by the absolute certainty
that he was *needed* -- but just as he spied the building to
which he had been drawn, a grey missile-like shape dropped out of
the sky to hover in front of an open window on the second floor.
It looked like a futuristic motorcycle, for all that motorcycles
didn't fly.

He paused, confused and alarmed, on the roof across from what he
could now see was a jewelry shop like so many others he had
searched, as the craft's rider threw himself through the window.
A moment later, the overwhelming, semiconscious *necessity* that
had driven him halfway across the district suddenly evaporated.

Tuxedo Mask wasn't needed any more.

Confused and curious, he melted back into the shadows on the
roof to wait and watch.

                              * * *

I took in the scene below me with a glance.  Floating demonic
creature, almost as high up as I was and vaguely female in form
and appearance.  A veritable army of human women, clearly mind-
controlled.  And all of them were focused on a tiny blonde girl
in red, white, and blue, down on her knees against a plinth and
sobbing.

My first thought on seeing her was, "Sailor V?"  But even though
she was blonde and about the same age, the hair was the wrong
style and the costume, though similar, was simpler and more
elegant, looking less like a repurposed school uniform and more
like a... I don't know, something that shared an evolutionary
ancestor with serafuku?  Regardless, something about it seemed
oddly familiar.

The hell with pondering fashion.  If I didn't do something and
fast, they would tear that kid to pieces.  The demon triumphantly
declared "Time to finish you off!" and thrust out a hand toward
the girl, who was all but calling for her mommy.  I expected a
blast or other gesture-aimed effect, but instead its arm simply
stretched.

I drew God's Toothpick, expanded it, and dropped down to the
floor between the mob and her, batting the taloned hand away on
the way down, well before it could reach the kid.  That got me
the full attention of the demon-thing even before I hit the
ground.  "Who are you?" it demanded as I landed in a crouch.

I stood up straight with the Toothpick held horizontally in front
of me.  "'No one of consequence'," I quoted at it.  Behind me,
the girl was still sobbing -- I don't think she'd even noticed
that I was there, as she was escalating into a full-blown wail.

I was just about to start laying into the lot of them when that
wail suddenly gained a *whole* lot of harmonics and overtones,
and the enthralled women started dropping -- knocked out but
still breathing.  I risked a look behind me, and saw that the red
jewels the girl had on her ponytails were resonating and glowing.

"Nice trick, kid," I murmured, then turned back to the surprised-
looking demon as the wail ended.  "Looks like it's just the two
of us, ugly."

"No," came a high, slightly quavery voice from behind me.  "The
*three* of us."

"Sailor Moon!" an unexpected third voice shouted.  It sounded
like another teenager, one who was... at ankle height?

I glanced back over my shoulder.  The girl was back on her feet.
She was a *tiny* thing, not more than a meter and a half tall,
a part of my mind noted irrelevantly.  There was a determined
look on her face that was completely at odds with the tear
tracks there.  "You sure, kid?"

"Yeah," she said with a curt nod.  "And I'm Sailor Moon, not
'kid'."

I flashed her a grin, and said, "Fair enough.  I go by 'Looney
Toons'.  Let's see what you've got, Sailor Moon."

"Take your tiara off, say 'Moon Tiara Action!', and throw it
at her," that mystery voice said again from near the floor.  I
chanced a look in that direction, and spotted a black cat with
red eyes and a gold crescent on its head.  It gave me a very
intelligent -- and dubious -- look.

I looked back up to see the kid -- sorry, Sailor Moon -- do
exactly as instructed.  When the tiara turned into a disk of
glowing energy in her hand, I figured she -- or rather, the cat --
was onto something.  Just to be safe, though, when she released
her laser frisbee, I flung the Toothpick at the demon as well.

The stupid creature didn't even try to dodge, instead just crying
out in fear.  The tiara and the Toothpick both struck at the same
time, the tiara splatting into it while the Toothpick blew
through its chest and returned to my hand.  The demon froze in
midair and turned a greyish color before crumbling into dust
starting from its feet and moving up.  The gritty powder formed a
neat little pile -- like the sand in the bottom of an hourglass --
on the floor below where it had been floating.  And then a moment
later it vanished, as if it had never been there.

It was an odd effect, and I suspected the energy frisbee was the
cause as the Toothpick had never done anything of the sort
before.  Not a bad attack, but too much wasted motion.

"Good job, Sailor Moon," I said -- completely sincerely -- as the
Toothpick flew back to my hand.  I collapsed it, and as I slid it
back into its holster I added, "You could probably shave a couple
seconds off that tiara attack, though.  And, I'm sorry, but if
you're going to end up crying in the face of the enemy, you're
going to get yourself killed!"

She huffed and parked her little fists on her hips.  "Well, I'm
sorry!  It's my first time doing this, and that youma was scary!"

"Really?" I asked.  "Your first time?"

She scowled adorably at me.  "Yeah!  So I think I should get a
break!"

I considered this for a moment, then nodded.  "You're right.  For
your first night on the job, you did really well.  Look, if
that's the case, let's get out of here and find a place to talk.
If you're serious about this gig, the least I can do is give you
some advice."

"I don't know..." she said doubtfully.  The cat didn't look too
enthused, either.

"I know of a few all-night places around this neighborhood," I
tried once more.  "Let's go, we'll get a burger or ice cream or
something, and talk.  My treat."

She immediately perked up.  "Ice cream?"

I laughed.  "Yeah, c'mon.  I'll get you whatever you want as
long as you talk to me."

                              * * *

After we made sure that the unconscious women in the jewelry
store -- including the owner and her daughter, who were locked in
the basement -- were all alive and breathing, I briefly debated
making a 119 call.  I chose not to, because despite the demonic
presence in the shop no one had been seriously harmed, and mage
sight showed no lingering contamination.  Also, I did not yet
have anonymized communications here, and didn't want to answer
perfectly reasonable questions about why I had been in a jewelry
store well after its closing time.

Calling emergency services hadn't seemed to occur to Sailor Moon
(or the cat).  As long as no one seemed to have been permanently
harmed, she was happy to move on, a sentiment I agreed with --
this time.  I called my bike down from where it was hovering, and
it was waiting obediently at the curb by the time we walked out
the front door.

                              * * *

Tuxedo Mask stood in the shadows and watched as the vehicle on
which the man in grey had arrived dropped out of the sky to
float, bobbing gently and faintly whirring, in the street near
the jewelry store's entrance.  A blonde girl in a tight white and
blue minidress and the man in grey calmly exited the shop
side-by-side, speaking softly to each other.  Before the door
could close behind them, a black cat scampered out to join them
on the sidewalk.

He drifted to the edge of the roof as the man and the girl
mounted the motorcycle -- for that's what it clearly was now that
it was on the ground.  She'd obviously never ridden one before,
and needed help getting onto the seat.  He blinked in surprise as
the black cat leapt up and settled in behind her, and a moment
later they were disappearing around a corner.

Tuxedo Mask stared after them for a long while.  There had been
something about the girl... something that teased the edges of
his memory.  With a sigh, he turned and launched himself back
into the night.

                              * * *

I took Sailor Moon and her cat to a little 24-hour place a couple
blocks away called "Handoki's LunchCounter".  I'd eaten there
before and had liked both the quality and variety of their food.
As I helped her off the bike, I said, "It's up to you if you want
to go civvie or not in here.  I'd say not to, but it's your
choice."

"Does it really matter?  Waaaah!" she cried as she nearly tripped
on the curb.  I held out an arm for her to steady herself on.
She grabbed it and smiled a thank you at me as she hauled herself
vertical again.  "It's not like I'm wearing a mask," she added,
letting go.

"No," I allowed, "but you do have that same blurry-face thing
going that Sailor V seems to have."

"I do?"

I nodded.  "It's fairly subtle, not as pronounced as in the
photos of her, but it's there.  I can tell that you're blonde and
that you have blue eyes, and that you're probably pretty cute."
She blushed.  "And I can make out your expressions, like smiling
or frowning.  But beyond that, well, based on your face alone I
likely couldn't pick you out of a crowd."  I deliberately didn't
mention that the combination of her height and hairstyle probably
would be a dead giveaway, though.

"Wow.  I didn't know that."  She glanced down at the cat, who
just returned the look.

"You didn't?  Just how long have you been doing this?" I had to
ask.

"What time is it?" she countered.

I glanced at the clock in the corner of my HUD.  "Almost 8:30."

"About half an hour, then," she said with another glance at the
cat.

I blinked.  "Well.  Damn.  And how long have you had your
metatalents?"

She peered up at me, puzzled.  "Me-ta-ta-re-n-tsu?" she sounded
out the unfamiliar word in Japanese phonemes.  "What does that
mean?"

"Powers," I explained.

"Oh!"  She nodded once, briskly.  "About half an hour," she
repeated with a little giggle.

"And your first reaction..." I started, then shook my head.  "No,
let's not get into this on the street.  Ice cream first, talk
later."

"Ice cream!" she chirped and marched into the restaurant.  The
cat gave me an assessing look, then followed her in before the
door swung shut.  I chuckled and joined them.

Ten minutes later we were sitting on opposite sides of a booth
while Sailor Moon started in on a bowl of ice cream nearly as
large as her head, made up of half a dozen flavors and twice as
many toppings and sauces.  (When she'd ordered it I'd almost
winced; my innocent offer to buy was going to cost me a bit more
than I had expected.)  In front of me was a creditable burger and
fries, and my helmet was on the bench seat beside me.  We were
alone in the small restaurant aside from the cook/server, who had
barely reacted to the sight of the two of us (plus cat) except to
take and quickly deliver our orders.

I picked up my burger in both hands and held it before me,
seemingly to study it, but actually taking the moment to slip
into mage sight to examine both her and the cat, who was curled
up at her side.  The cat had the aura of an intelligent being,
which came as absolutely no surprise.  What *was* a surprise was
that it wasn't a creature of enchantment -- if my mage sight was
to be trusted, other than having a "gift of tongues"-type charm
on it and some kind of native shapeshifting talent that reminded
me a lot of Kat's, it was a perfectly normal, absolutely mundane
talking cat.

Okay.  I've seen stranger things.

Sailor Moon, on the other hand, was far from mundane.  Clearly a
young magic-user, she was gifted with enough raw power to put
your average archmage to shame.  My mage sight couldn't reveal
details of personality or morals, but the power that welled up
out of her soul was so pure and so clearly "light" that she
reminded me of Belldandy or Skuld.

It was also exactly the same as that wavefront of light magic
which had washed over me earlier in the evening.  As a result, I
was pretty sure that even without her "half hour" estimate, I
could now pinpoint almost to the minute when Sailor Moon had
received her metatalents.

Continuing on with the scan, I noted that she had an object of
enchantment on her -- the brooch on her collar -- and her outfit
was in fact a magical construct, made up of energy locked into a
metastable configuration.

And while pondering the construction of her ensemble I realized
why it had teased at my memory when I first saw it.  Seventy
years wasn't long enough for me to forget the night I'd briefly
gifted Lisa Vanette with telekinesis, and the outfit into which
she'd changed her clothing with it -- an outfit that save for the
colors and mask was a close match to Sailor Moon's.

And Lisa had called herself "Sailor Loon".

That could *not* be a coincidence.  But as much as I wanted to
pursue that mystery, though, I tabled it.  I seriously doubted
that a teen-aged girl in 1992 would have clue one about something
that happened in 2037 in a different universe entirely.  But I
sorely wished I could corner Lisa once more...

Or maybe Marller and her sisters.

But I couldn't, so I turned my attention back to the matter at
hand.  "So," I said as casually as I could between bites of my
burger.  "First things first.  My bona fides."  I stretched my
right arm out along the bench seat and shook my ID out of its
pocket inside my sleeve and into my hand.  I held it up over the
tabletop and opened it, revealing the projected images of both me
and my credentials, and held it out to her.

She put down her spoon and took it very cautiously, but with a
look of wonder on her face.  "Wow," she breathed as she poked a
forefinger though the rotating image of yours truly.  Next to
her, the cat had sat up and was staring at my ID with bugging
eyes.  *Yeah, surprise, Kitty.  Not what you were expecting,
huh?*

Sailor Moon finally handed it back to me, a sheepish grin on her
face as she picked up her spoon again.  "Um, it's very cool but
I'm not that great at reading English."

The cat rolled its eyes.

I waved it off.  "That's all right.  Basically, what it says is
that I'm Colonel Douglas Sangnoir of the United Nations Metahuman
Peacekeeping Force Warriors Alpha, codenamed 'Looney Toons'."

"Metahuman Peacekeeping..." she repeated, brow furrowed, then
shoveled a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

"There's a word a lot of worlds have that mine doesn't --
'superhero'."  Her eyes widened when she heard that.   "The
Warriors, we're a team of superheroes charged with acting as both
the police and the army for the United Nations in the version of
Earth where I come from."

Sailor Moon blinked, another spoonful of ice cream halfway to her
mouth.  "The version of Earth...?"

I nodded and favored her with a sad smile.  "I'm a dimensional
traveler, from another universe.  I was ejected from my world by
an enemy in battle, and I've been wandering from timeline to
timeline looking for my home for a very long time now."  I took a
bite of my burger while she processed that, then added, "One of
the things I did at home was train young metahumans -- super-
types like you -- in how to make the best use of their abilities
in a fight.  And I've been a teacher many times over in the
worlds I've visited.  So if you want, I could coach you until
you're comfortable enough with your abilities to go out on your
own.  Since, you know, you've only had them less than an hour."

She looked up at me, eyes wide.  "And if things got scary again?"

"I'd be there as backup.  Not to rescue you, but to show you how
to rescue yourself."  I swirled a french fry through some ketchup
and popped it into my mouth.

"I like that idea," she murmured, the spoon hanging from one
corner of her mouth.  "Ow!" she suddenly shrieked, and the spoon
clattered on the tabletop.  "Luna!"

"You have an objection, Miss Luna?" I asked, looking at the cat,
who was glaring at me.  "And don't pretend you don't understand
Japanese -- if you wanted to hide that from me, you shouldn't've
been shouting instructions to Sailor Moon during the fight."  I
popped another fry into my mouth.  "And if you don't want to blow
your innocent kitty act in front of the mundanes, well, you're a
shapeshifter.  Go human and join the conversation that way."

Sailor Moon, who had retrieved her spoon and been about to
sulkily shovel another mound of ice cream into her mouth, turned
her head so fast I was surprised her ponytails didn't crack like
whips.  "You're a what?"

Luna, meanwhile, looked like a cartoon character who'd been
whapped upside the head with a cast-iron frying pan.  "I'm a
what?  I..."  she said in that teenaged-girl voice of hers.  Then
her eyes got wide, as though she were suddenly remembering some
long-forgotten piece of information.  "I am!  Dear Serenity, how
did I..."  And just like a stop trick from *Bewitched*, the cat
was gone and a girl in a yellow dress with waves of long black
hair took its place -- a girl with a shocked and stunned
expression on her face.

"Wow, Luna, you're really pretty!" Sailor Moon gushed, completely
forgetting about her ice cream.

I stuck my hand up.  "Waiter?  A tuna salad sandwich and a glass
of milk for our friend here, please?"

                              * * *

"You," humanoid-Luna said while delicately nibbling her tuna
sandwich, "must be the mage I detected when searching for Sailor
Moon."  Her voice, to my surprise, was not much different from
that of her cat form.  Maybe a little more resonant, but that's
it.  And a couple odd phonemes -- most notably a very faint "ts"
for "s", and a firmly-placed liquid consonant that partook evenly
of "r" and "l" -- that most listeners wouldn't even notice, but
to my ear they indicated that she wasn't a native speaker of
Japanese.  Physically she looked only a couple of years older
than Sailor Moon, certainly not out of her teens.

"No doubt," I replied.  "And I would wager that Miss Moon here
gaining her metatalents was the transformation/empowerment event
I detected an hour or so ago from all the way over in Motoazabu."

"Wait, wait, what do you mean 'mage'?" Sailor Moon demanded in
between shoveling ice cream into her mouth.

I shrugged.  "I'm kind of a wizard, Sailor Moon.  Not the
traditional kind, but a magic-user nonetheless.  Like you, in
fact."  I grinned at her.  "That means I can do more than just
throw sticks through flying demons and drive a cool motorcycle.
I'm a combat mage with eighty years' experience both in the field
and in administration.  I'm also one of the top 25 experts in the
world back at home when it comes to magic and magical theory."  I
picked up my burger, took a big bite, then laid it back down on
the plate and chewed while Luna and Sailor Moon glanced at each
other without saying anything.

"Okay," I said after swallowing.  "Enough about me, then.  Let's
talk about you."

"Ooookay," Sailor Moon mumbled dubiously around her spoon.  Luna
looked at me suspiciously over her sandwich.

I held up another french fry and gestured with it like it was a
pointer.  "Sailor V.  Sailor Moon.  What's the connection between
you two?  Some kind of franchise deal?"

Sailor Moon opened her mouth to answer, then closed it.  Then she
turned to her ... pet?  partner?  companion?  "You know, Luna,
that's a really good question," she said.  "You just showed up
tonight and told me I was Sailor Moon, and then I transformed and
I heard Naru calling for help, and then everything else happened,
and this is the first chance I've had to think about it all.  Do
you know Sailor V?  Am I supposed to be her partner or
something?"

I was pretty sure the black cat was Luna's native form, but it
was a very *human* expression of panic and uncertainty that swept
across her face for a fraction of a second.  Then she schooled
her features into something more confident -- even arrogant.
"That is not something I should be revealing to a random stranger
in a cheap restaurant," she declared haughtily.  "When we return
to your home, Sailor Moon, I shall explain everything."

Translation for those who don't speak Cat:  "That will give me
enough time to get my story straight."  Sailor Moon glanced at me
and gave an apologetic little shrug.

"You two just met for the first time tonight?" I asked her.  "You
hadn't known each other before this?"

"No," Luna said, looking down at her plate while Sailor Moon
grunted "Uh-huh" around another spoonful of ice cream, nuts and
sauce.  She swallowed and added, "She just jumped in through my
window and said, 'You're Sailor Moon'."

"And you just said 'okay' and got meta... powers?"

She bit her lip.  "Well, yeah, kinda."

I pointed at her with another french fry.  "That was careless of
you.  Are you normally in the habit of accepting magical powers
from random stray animals, with no questions asked?"  Ignoring
the little noises of outrage from both of them I went on.  "It's
too late now to do anything about it, but when you two have your
talk later, find out what it's going to cost you.  Power never
comes without a price, magic especially."  I ate the fry.

Sailor Moon's eyes grew very wide.  "A price?"

I nodded.  "Some prices are good -- hard work and study, or a
duty that you would gladly take on anyway."  I slipped back into
mage sight and gave Luna another good hard look.  I was far
better than I had once been at spotting Celestial influences in a
creature's soul, but I still wasn't perfect.  While Luna had a
mortal soul which didn't *seem* to have any Infernal markers in
it, I couldn't be absolutely certain that she was clean.  "And
some aren't so good.  Some are outright traps for the unwary."
Luna growled wordlessly at the implied accusation.

"Now, as far as I can tell, you already had the power," I went on
without looking away.  "Potentially, if not actively.  With the
right teacher and a lot of work, you could have been one he- heck
of a sorceress, with no limits beyond the extent of your studies
and how much energy you can draw on."  I shrugged.  "I don't
know, maybe you can still follow that path.  What you need to be
concerned about is if the... template that Luna's used to
activate your gifts restricts them to *its* limits, and not
yours."

Sailor Moon looked sidelong at her companion.  "Luna...?"

Luna drew herself up.  "You are the reincarnation of the Warrior
of the Moon.  I've done nothing more than give you access to the
power you had in your previous life, ten thousand years ago."

"Ten thousand years...?" Sailor Moon boggled at that, her ice
cream momentarily forgotten.

I'll admit that I was more than a little boggled myself.  "That
would be before the dawn of recorded history," I pointed out.

Luna turned and looked down her nose at me.  "*Recorded* history,
yes.  When by the hand of the Great Enemy the Moon Kingdom fell
and the Silver Millennium ended, mankind was plunged into
barbarism and lost all knowledge of its past."

"But you know of it," I said.

"I was *there*!" she snarled at me, her control finally cracking.
"I was at Queen Serenity's side when she sealed away the Great
Enemy.  I was there when she caught up the souls of her daughter
and the Sailor Warriors and sent them into the future to be
reborn.  And I was there when she put me and a..."  She stumbled
over the next word, for a moment looking blank and confused.
"When she put me into hibernation and sent me into the future
after them, charging me to find them and train them against the
return of the Great Enemy.  I.  Was.  There!" she repeated
angrily.

There was a long moment when the only sounds were made by the
cook/server at his grill.  Sailor Moon was staring at Luna with
wide eyes.

"How long ago was it for you, Luna?" I asked gently.

The fire went out of her and she deflated, shoulders slumping and
head bowing.  "Five days.  I... I lost everything I knew less
than five days ago."

Sailor Moon made a wordless sound of sympathy and lunged at her,
wrapping her up in an enthusiastic, sympathetic hug, gently
rocking the distraught cat-girl and crooning wordlessly to her.

I watched as one girl consoled the other, feeling a sudden surge
of empathy.  More than seventy years ago, I had been torn from
the world I knew and thrust without warning into another one,
alien and unfamiliar to me.  "'I have been a stranger in a
strange land'," I murmured to myself.

I dug a pen out of my pocket and scrawled my phone number on a
paper napkin, then pushed it across the table.  "Here," I said
softly when Sailor Moon, catching the movement in her peripheral
vision, looked up at me.  "Call me if you'd like some coaching,
or just to talk to someone who can relate."

She nodded wordlessly, still holding Luna.

"Also..." I added before she could turn back to the girl in her
arms, "this talk of a 'Great Enemy' worries me.  Whether you want
my help or not, I'd appreciate it if you let me know whatever you
learn about them."  She nodded again.

"And don't worry about the check, I'll take care of it like I
promised."  That got me the briefest flicker of a smile before
she turned her attention back to Luna.

I stopped at the counter to pay the bill, adding a generous tip
and a little extra to cover anything else the girls might want.
Pausing at the door, I glanced their way one last time.  Luna was
quietly sobbing in Sailor Moon's arms.  I knew all too well how
she was feeling, and wanted to help.  But I was the unwelcome
outsider who'd elbowed his way into their business, and I'd do
more harm than good if I insisted on being present right now.

As I settled in on my bike and cinched the chinstrap of my
helmet, I thought about this superpowered teen on her first night
as a vig, and hoped that she decided to ask for help.  Despite
being almost twice her age, Sailor Moon reminded me of Kat and
Dwimanor's daughter Nina, who had settled on "Mercurial Maiden"
as her code name of the month just before I was kicked out of
Homeline.  I found myself already feeling the same kind of
avuncular protectiveness for Sailor Moon that I did for Nina, and
my instincts were screaming at me that it was horribly *wrong* to
let her out on the streets without at least *some* training.  And
frankly, I didn't trust a certain teenaged cat-girl to provide
it.

As I drove back to Motoazabu, I decided that if I could in any
way find out when she was active, I would watch over Sailor Moon
as she took her first fumbling steps on the path of a metagifted
vigilante.

                              * * *

Saturday, April 4, 1992, 8:25 AM

Usagi hated Saturday morning classes.

She hated classes on all other mornings, too, but Saturday
classes held a special, dark place in her heart all their own.

Saturday classes after her first night as Sailor Moon followed
by three hours of comforting a cat-girl in the middle of an
emotional breakdown, resulting in insufficient sleep and a little
brother yelling in her ear to wake her up... there was a very
special Hell reserved for those classes, she was sure.

And for a certain cat, who was sleeping off *her* late night on
Usagi's pillow.  Where Usagi ought to be!

As she lay there with her forehead flat against her desk's cool,
smooth surface with her arms wrapped around her head and her eyes
closed, and the blissful call of exhaustion beckoning her back to
sleep, the only thing keeping her awake was her friend Naru, who
was describing *her* night to Sakura.

"I had *such* a wonderful dream last night."  Usagi reflected
that, as much as she loved her friend, Naru's namesake Osaka
accent could *grate* on her ears sometimes.  Especially this
morning.  "A beautiful girl called 'Sailor Moon' and a brave,
handsome man in grey saved me from a horrible monster!"

*Yeah.  Dream.  Right,* Usagi thought without heat.  *I wish.*

"What?" Sakura cried.  "I had the same dream!"

"Me, too!"  That was Hitomi's voice.  Didn't she sit on the
other side of the room?

"Oh, that's so weird!" Naru declared.

*Oh.  Yeah.  They were both in the store, too, weren't they?*
Usagi thought absently, still savoring the fleeting coolness of
the desktop.  *Good thing Luna didn't tell me people couldn't
know about Sailor Moon, because that would be all messed up
already.*

"Usagi?  Hey, Usagi?" Naru called.

*Must. Not. Hit. Best. Friend,* Usagi reminded herself as Naru's
voice cut right through her pleasant muzziness.  "Too tired," she
mumbled.  "Gotta sleep..."

                              * * *

Across the classroom, Mizuno Ami bent her head down and hid her
face with the textbook she held before herself, trying not to let
anyone see that she had been watching the girls clustering around
Tsukino-san's desk.  For a moment, she wondered wistfully what it
would be like to have friends like that before forcing her
attention back to the book.  Schoolwork first.  She would have
time enough to have friends after graduating from university.

                              * * *

I wasn't surprised that there was nothing about the jewelry store
mess in the morning papers the next day -- not enough lead time,
after all.  But the afternoon and evening papers had nothing,
either, none of them.  I know:  I checked every paper at the
newsstand on the near end of the Azabujuban market street before
being ejected by an annoyed shopkeeper.

The afternoon was cool and overcast but not yet rainy, so I
decided to walk down to the other end of the street and
personally look in on the store.  Along the way I was constantly
reminded of the continuing impact that the current recession was
having on the neighborhood -- there were a surprising number of
empty storefronts with "for rent" or "for sale" signs in their
windows for such a popular and otherwise prosperous area.  About
the only places with significant custom were a video arcade and
the various food shops.

There were other signs of hard times, as well.  In an alley next
to a bakery, an old man in threadbare Chinese robes sat at a card
table with a set of Kau cim sticks telling fortunes for the
pocket change of his schoolgirl clientele.  In another alley, a
woman was selling books and handicrafts from a blanket spread on
the pavement.  I had already been aware of homeless persons -- a
rarity in almost any 20th century Japan -- in the train station,
and as I walked I occasionally spied one searching a dumpster far
back between buildings.

Finally, I reached the end of the street, just before the
station.  I hung a left, and headed past the jewelry store
itself.

No cops.  No yellow tape.

No more sale signs, either.  Or crowds.

And only the barest traces of magic -- and what was left was
decaying and vanishing even as I studied it with my magesight.

I walked back to my place, thinking about it.  *Someone* had to
have wondered why his wife, daughter, sister, or mother hadn't
come home until the wee hours of the morning...  Come to think of
it, someone should have wondered *before* either Sailor Moon or I
had gotten to the shop.

It was very strange.

                              * * *

On my way home I stopped in an electronics shop and picked up an
answering machine.  Given that she was very clearly middle- or
high school-aged, Sailor Moon was as likely to call during my
work hours as not -- if she called at all.

If she did call, I didn't want to miss it just because I wasn't
home.

                              * * *

Thursday, April 9, 1992, 12:13 PM

Usagi ate her lunch slowly and contemplatively as she pondered
the events of the past few days.  (Unnoticed by her at the next
desk, Naru Osaka was staring wide-eyed at the sight.  Usagi *not*
inhaling her lunch -- indeed, having a lunch left to eat at all
given how often she had mid-morning hunger pangs -- was so
unexpected as to almost be an omen of some coming disaster.)

She poked absently at a cartoonish octopus made from a piece of
sausage and frowned.  Gentle, dorky Umino seemed to have no
memory at all of being a bully, a thug, and a gang leader over
the last few days.  Whatever the fortune-telling monster had done
to him hadn't been permanent, but if it had, Usagi would have had
no idea what to do about it.  The thought almost broke her heart.

And then, there was the man in the tuxedo and mask.  He had
appeared from nowhere, swooping in and helping her when it looked
like she was about to be defeated.  It might have seemed so very
romantic if she hadn't met Sangnoir-san on her first night as
Sailor Moon; instead the fancy dress and speech and the roses (!)
all seemed a little silly to her.  Sangnoir-san was a soldier,
and a soldier was what was needed to fight monsters.  A man who
showed up for a fight in a top hat seemed like he was more
interested in looking cool than in beating the monster.

He *was* kind of cute, she admitted to herself.  But cute wasn't
enough to win the fight.  And he really didn't do all that much --
one rose and "you can do it, Sailor Moon!"  (And how did he know
what she was called, anyway?  The only ones who *should* know
were Luna and Sangnoir-san.)  Then he ran off after she destroyed
the monster.

Luna didn't trust him.  And with the way he'd acted, Usagi wasn't
sure *she* did, either.  Sangnoir-san at least had made sure she
was okay, wanted to give her some advice, and bought her ice
cream.

Then again, Luna didn't trust Sangnoir-san either.

She stopped toying with her food and considered that.  Luna
didn't seem to trust *anyone*.  Usagi wondered if she'd been
abandoned as a kitten, or maybe mistreated, and that was why Luna
didn't seem to like anyone but her.  And maybe her family...
unless that was part of Luna's act of looking like a normal cat
around them.  It was hard to tell.

But you couldn't go around not trusting anyone, Usagi reflected.
That was just wrong.  Sure, there were bad people, but if you
never reached out to anyone, you missed all the good people, too.
So unless he did something bad, Usagi decided she'd trust the man
in the mask and the tuxedo.  Even if he did look a little silly,
he seemed to have his heart in the right place.

And if he deserved her trust, then Sangnoir-san, who'd done a lot
more for her that first night, certainly did.

Usagi pushed a slice of fish cake around her bento with her
chopsticks.  If she was going to trust Sangnoir-san, then there
was no reason not to accept his offer to help her.  Twice now it
had taken someone else to keep her from becoming a monster's
dinner.  If her job as Sailor Moon was as important as Luna kept
saying, she needed to get better at it, and fast!

She nodded to herself.  That's what she'd do, then -- on the way
home from school she'd stop at a pay phone and call Sangnoir-san.
She knew she could be stupid sometimes, but she wasn't so stupid
as to refuse the kind of help he was offering, now that she was
sure she needed it.

Decision made, she smiled happily and popped the sausage-octopus
into her mouth.  As she moaned in delight at the flavor, a crash
came from her left.  Eyes wide, she turned toward the sound.

"Naru?" she asked, tilting her head.  "Why are you on the floor?"

                              * * *

Thursday, April 9, 1992, 6:10 PM

When I got home that evening, there was a blinking light on my
answering machine -- the first since I'd installed it.  I dropped
my things on the chair, then crossed the room to the small table
on which the phone and the machine both lived.  I pressed "play".

"... Um.  Hi.  Sangnoir-san, this is...  Well, we talked the
other night?"  It was, surprise surprise, a teenaged girl's
voice.  And given that the grand total of teenaged girls that I'd
spoken to in the entire time I'd been in this world so far was
*one*, I was reasonably certain that it was Sailor Moon.  "You
said you'd help if I needed it?"  There was a pause, and I could
almost hear her biting her lip.  "I think I need it."  There was
another pause.  "I'll be at the restaurant again tonight after
eight, okay?"  One more pause.  "So, um.  Bye?"  And then there
was a beep.

It wasn't until the message ended that I realized she had sounded
different.  Apparently, whatever blurred her face had also
changed her voice as well, making it a touch deeper and more
resonant.  Not that it was all that deep -- we're talking early-
teen Japanese girl here, after all -- but still, the voice on the
recording was noticeably not the one she'd spoken with a few
nights earlier.  If I hadn't had the context to identify her, I
might have dismissed her as a different girl entirely.

Which was obviously the purpose of the effect.

I glanced at the clock.  Quarter after six.  No rush.  I could
make Handoki's in fifteen minutes -- less, if I didn't stay on
the roads.

Or the ground.

                              * * *

I stepped into the LunchCounter a couple minutes after eight.  I
had no problem identifying her -- the height and the hair were
the same.

She was also the only patron in the whole place.

As I walked over to the corner table where she'd parked herself,
I took in what I presumed to be her true appearance:  still
short, huge blue eyes, and yeah, cute.  She was in a genuine
sailor-style school uniform this time, and even though it wasn't
anywhere as form-fitting as the costume she'd been in a few
nights earlier, it was easy to see that she wasn't quite as
developed as she'd appeared to be "in uniform" as Sailor Moon.
Padding in the costume, or part of the disguise effect?  I
couldn't be sure.

She was alone, having somehow managed to ditch Luna.  (I
approved; I suspected the cat/girl would have insisted on coming
along, if not nixing the entire plan outright.)  A dish of plain
vanilla ice cream -- a normal-sized one and looking almost
forlorn and lonely compared to the melon-sized frozen concoction
I'd paid for last time -- sat untouched and melting in front of
her.  She just sat there, spoon clenched in one hand, staring at
it with unseeing eyes as I walked up.

"Hi," I said gently.

She started, dropping the spoon to clatter on the tabletop.  "Oh!
Hi!" she squeaked.

I gestured at the bench seat on the opposite side of the table
from her.  "May I sit?"

She blinked.  "Sure?" she answered in a tone that made it a half-
question.

"Thanks."  I dropped my helmet into the corner of the seat next
to the wall then slid in to sit exactly opposite her.  She went
back to watching her ice cream melt, and as she did I studied
her.  A minute later the server came over and I ordered a roast
beef Dagwood (Handoki's menu was pretty damned eclectic) and a
hot tea.

As soon as he had gotten behind the counter to make my sandwich,
I very softly asked, "Did you lose someone?"

"What?"  Her gaze snapped up to me.  "No!  No..."  She trailed
off as her eyes drifted back down to the tabletop.  "A ... friend
of mine... got changed.  He's such a goofy guy, kinda loud and
kinda geeky... and they turned him into some kind of kid Yakuza."
She looked back up at me.  "It was horrible, he was leading a
gang and breaking windows and scaring the teachers.  And all I
could think was, if I can't beat this monster, he might stay that
way.  And it would be like Umino -- the real Umino -- had died,
and there was just this mean jerk who looked like him left in his
place.  Forever."  She choked back a sob.  "And it would be all
my fault."

I didn't worry whether it would be appropriate or not -- I
reached out and covered her hand with mine.  "No, it wouldn't.
It would have been theirs, whoever they are.  There's no shame or
blame in failing in the fight against evil -- only in running
from the fight.  Which you didn't.  And you won, too -- it's
pretty obvious that you did."

She gave me a shaky smile, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
"Yeah.  I kicked its butt."  The smile vanished, and the tears
threatened to spill anyway.  "But not fast enough, and I was
still so scared.  Again."  She rubbed at her eyes with her free
hand.  "I don't want to be scared."

The server came back with my sandwich and my tea, and as he set
them down on the table in front of me, Sailor Moon scrubbed at
her eyes again, this time with both hands.  She took a deep
breath, then ate a bite of her ice cream.  "You said you would
teach me."

I took the first bite of my sandwich.  "I did," I confirmed after
chewing and swallowing.

"What can you teach me?" she demanded.

I put the sandwich back down on the plate, snagging a potato chip
as I did.  "I can teach you a lot."  Crunch.  "What do you want
to learn?"

The tears were gone, replaced by resolve in her blue eyes.  "How
not to be scared.  How to fight."

"That's a good place to start," I said.  "Are you willing to work
at it?"

"It's going to be hard, isn't it?" she asked.

I nodded.  "I won't lie.  It will.  Are you up to it?"

She bit her lip, and then that resolve came back.  "I won't lie
either.  I'm a lazy, clumsy crybaby.  And kinda dumb.  Ask anyone
who knows me.  And I really can't believe I was a soldier in
another life, no matter what Luna says.  But I don't want anyone
to get hurt or die.  So if it'll keep people from getting hurt,
I'll work hard."  She suddenly shot me an impish little grin.
"I'll probably complain a lot, though.  Just so you know."

I laughed.  "Believe me, I've worked with worse.  If you don't
give up, I can teach you everything you want.  And more."

She got a thoughtful look in her eyes.  "I want to learn how to
fight," she repeated.  "No -- not just how to fight.  How to
*win*.  If I have to fight, I want to start knowing I can beat
the monster, not wondering if I can."  She tapped the side of her
dish with her spoon.  "I want to learn how to use the magic you
said I have.  Can I do more than just throw my tiara?  Do I need
to turn into Sailor Moon to use it?"

*Do I need Luna to tell me how to do everything?* she *didn't*
say, but I knew she had to be thinking it.

"Good questions," I said before taking another bite.  I chewed
and swallowed and added, "I can't answer them for you yet.  But I
know how to find out.  As for winning...  I can't teach you how
to win all the time, every time.  But I can teach you how to
maximize your strength and your chances.  I can teach you how to
learn enough about your enemy to put them down, even while you're
busy fighting them.  And I can teach you how to survive a loss to
come back and win later."

"Yeah," she breathed, staring at me with wide eyes.  "That's it.
That's what I want.  When do we start?"

I chuckled and crunched another potato chip.  "When do you want
to start?"

"Right away!"

I picked up my sandwich, still chuckling.  "I'm guessing you've
got school during the day, so how about Saturday?"

"Okay."  She scooped up a spoonful of her half-melted ice cream
and shoved it into her mouth.  "Saturday afternoon after school."

"Right."  I took a bite.  "That gives us time to work up a cover
story."

She tilted her head.  "Cover story?" she mumbled around the spoon
that was still in her mouth.

"Well," I said after swallowing, "I don't suppose you want to
tell your family you're now a superhero and you're off getting
combat training, do you?"

She made a little moue of annoyance.  "No, darn it.  Mama would
never let me out of the house."

Hm.  She claimed to be "kinda dumb".  "Well, how about this?  I'm
your new tutor.  What class are you getting your worst grades
in?"

"Mouuuuu!  All of them!" she moaned, and shoved another spoonful
of ice cream in.

"Well, then, that's it.  I'm helping you get your grades up, and
because you don't have a lot of pocket money, you're ... oh, I
don't know, doing chores or running errands for me or something."
I shrugged.  "We'll figure something out.  Something that makes
sense and doesn't make me look like a perv hitting on a pretty
schoolgirl."

She blushed and slid down in her seat a bit.  "Don't make fun of
me like that," she mumbled.  I rolled my eyes.  Gods save me from
insecure teens.  "But the tutor idea is good.  I really do need
help in just about everything."

I laughed.  "Then it's a good thing I can do that, too.  We'll
get you in shape, mind and body both.  And if we get your grades
up, that'll just reinforce the cover story, right?"

She pouted a little around the spoon, which was back in her
mouth.  "I s'pose."

"Then we have a deal?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, pulling out the spoon and sitting up
straighter.  "So, what do I call you now?  Sangnoir-sensei?"

I shrugged and had more sandwich.  "I'm fine with you calling me
'Doug'.  As for the honorific... 'Sensei', 'sempai', 'onii-san',
even 'jiji' are all okay by me -- your choice."

"'Jiji'?" she giggled.

I smiled secretively.  "I'm a lot older than I look, my dear Miss
Moon."

"You can't be *that* old!"

"Oh, believe me, I am.  I did say that I had 80 years of combat
experience."  I leaned in toward her.  "No lie, teishi:  I'm not
far from my 110th birthday."

Her eyes widened again.  "You're kidding!"

"Nope."  I leaned back again.  "I did a favor for some goddesses
many many years ago, and they extended my life for it.  I'm not
immortal, I'm just not growing older for a while."

"Wow," she breathed.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool," I said and took another bite from my
Dagwood.  "Now, one last thing.  I have to find a place for us to
train in, and when I do, I need to contact you to let you know
where it is and what time to meet me there."  I dug in my pocket
and pulled out a pen, and held it out to her along with a paper
napkin.

"Hm?" she hummed inquisitively, then chirped, "Oh!"  She took
them from me and scrawled a line of characters on the napkin
before pushing them both back to me across the table.  "There.
That's our phone number.  And my real name."

I looked at the napkin.  "Tsukino Usagi", it read in some of the
sloppiest kanji I'd ever seen.

I nearly rolled my eyes at the pun.  Rabbit of the Moon?  Really?
I had a sneaking suspicion that certain Fate-shaped entities of
my acquaintance were having fun again.

I controlled myself, though, and held out my hand.  "Well, Usagi-
chan, it is a pleasure to meet you."

She giggled as she took my hand and shook it.  "Thank you, Doug-
sensei.  Please treat me kindly."

                              * * *

The next morning, over breakfast, I realized that spiriting Usagi
off to a gym or park on Saturday afternoon probably wasn't the
best way to start her training.  Over the decades of my exile,
I've become quite adept at maintaining a secret identity, and the
first thing you need for one is plausibility.

Plausibility, and whole lot of chutzpah.

I was going to need the afternoon off to set this up.



END OF CHAPTER ONE

------------------------------------

This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2017, Robert M. Schroeck,
and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The "Sailor Moon" universe and the settings and the characters
thereof are the property and/or licenses of Takeuchi Naoko, TOEI
Animation, DiC, Kodansha, Bandai, Cloverway and others, and are
used without permission.

"Oh! My Goddess", and the settings and the characters thereof,
are copyright by and trademarks of Kosuke Fujishima, KISS and
Kodansha Ltd., and are used without permission.

"Douglas Q. Sangnoir," "Looney Toons", "The Loon" and any
representations thereof are copyright by and trademarks of Robert
M. Schroeck.

"Wetter Hexe," "Hexe" and any representations thereof are
copyright by and a trademark of Helen Imre.

"The Warriors", "Warriors' World", "Warriors International" and
"Warriors Alpha" are all jointly-held trademarks of The Warriors
Group.

For a full explanation of the references and hidden tidbits in
this story, see the Drunkard's Walk S Concordance at:

         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dwsconc.shtml

Other chapters of this story, along with other parts of the
Drunkard's Walk saga, can be found at:

         http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dwmain.shtml

The Drunkard's Walk discussion board is open for those who wish
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Many thanks to my prereaders on this chapter:  Christopher Angel,
Kathleen Avins, Nathan Baxter, Andrew Carr, Kevin Cody, Logan
Darklighter, Shaye Horwitz, Helen Imre, Eric James, Rob Kelk,
Josh Megerman, Berg Oswell, Peggy Schroeck and Amanda
Stair-Duran.

C&C gratefully accepted.