Lieutenant Drake Kavanaugh was the ideal man to have around during a crisis. He had graduated at the top of his class with honors from an Ivy League college. Since graduation he had worked his ass off at the Crystal Police Department, climbing the ranks at record-breaking speed. At work he was referred to as the Ice Prince because he was a lone wolf and he hardly lost his temper and if he did… well it felt like you were dealing with a glacier. Although in reality his true temper burned more hot then cold, but a couple of mishaps as a kid had taught him to leash it.
He also had the eerie ability to know when a person was lying or not. It made him a good cop, but it freaked a lot of people out, coworkers, civilians, and criminals alike. And last of all, Drake was the kind of man who believed only in things that he could see, touch, or argue with.
And while what was currently that was currently trying to strangle the pretty auburn-haired hostage fit into these three categories, he still could not believe what he was seeing and was hoping that it was because it was night and there was a lack of good light.
It was big. It was gray. And it was ugly as hell. Due to the skimpy black ball gown it wore, he could tell it was definitely female.
"Oh shit," he muttered finally in disbelief, unable to tear his eyes from the creature. He was starting to wish that he hadn’t volunteered to help with the situation in New Salem. There was something about it that a part of him recognized, but that was ridiculous.
"Snap out of it, Kavanaugh," he murmured to himself, a bad habit that he had picked up from years of living alone. "There are over twenty people inside that building trapped with the bride of Freddy Krueger, who need you right now. This is not the time to be trying to figure out why Mrs. Krueger seems familiar to you."
Moving swiftly and quietly, as to not to get the monster's attention, Drake crept past the barricades until he had reached a spot where he had a better view of what was going on inside of the jewelry store. He watched as the monster placed a hand on top of the head of the woman that it had moments ago been trying to strangle. A black light surrounded them both and then a few moments cleared. The monster then carelessly dropped the woman to the ground. According to one of his comrades, this had happened to about three other people, but none of them seemed to be dead.
Hearing gasps from behind him, he turned around to see a slender figure in blue and white jump down from the roof of the land gracefully on the sidewalk. He sized her up in a matter of moments. She wore what appeared to be a white bathing suit with a dark blue skirt that reminded him of a sailor skirt. On her feet were red, high-heeled boots, that were trimmed at the top with a white strip and golden crescent moon, and her hands and arms were encased in white gloves that stopped a few inches above her elbows. There was gold tiara on her forehead with a red jewel in the center, which was almost entirely covered up by her golden bangs.
And she had her hair up in what had to be the strangest hairstyle he had ever seen; two buns at each side of her head with hair flowing down each bun. But was even stranger was that although her face was unconcealed, her features were slightly fuzzy, as though he was looking at her though a gauze veil.
And she looked like she was in her late teens.
Something inside him snapped. Years of training, a reputation for coolness and caution, and self-preservation were shoved to the side as his temper broke free from the constraints he had put upon it. Perhaps it was because of the fact that this young woman who had her whole life in front of her was putting her life in danger for who knows what reason by jumping off roofs wearing some anime fan girl outfit into an area where some unknown creature was knocking women unconscious in a jewelry store. Or maybe it because he felt an urge, no need, to protect her and he was angry that she was making his job that much harder. But that was ridiculous.
Marching up to her without even bothering to call for backup or to pull out his gun, he stopped less than a foot away from her and glared down at her menacingly. “Who the hell are you?”
Since the top of her head barely cleared his chest, the girl was forced to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “Sailor Moon, at your service.”
‘And my oh my are you hot,’ Sailor Moon thought. Clearly this was a day of meeting hotties. First the jerk from this morning and now this cop, except the cop looked more like Apollo with his blonde hair. Although she was fairly certain that no one had every portrayed the Greek god of the sun with silver eyes. Or maybe that was the lighting because people didn’t have silver eyes, gray eyes, yes, but not silver.
Drake had to restrain himself from trying to throttle her. He had a potentially fatal situation on his hands and he had to deal with some teenybopper in a bodysuit with a ridiculous pseudonym, who was prancing around in the middle of the whole mess. He didn’t have time for this shit.
Without a word or giving her time to react, he hauled her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and ran out of the danger area.
“PUT ME DOWN, YOU JERK!!! I’M SAILOR MOON!!! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!!!! I’M HERE TO SAVE EVERYONE, YOU MORON!!! I’LL HAVE YOU ARRESTED FOR THIS, DO YOU HEAR ME?!?!? I’LL SUE YOUR ASS FOR TREATING ME THIS WAY!!!”
“Sweet Selene, how do you shut her off,” he muttered, and then wondered why he had said Selene instead of referring to God. He passed the blonde into the arms of an astonished officer and then pulled a pair of handcuffs out of pocket of his jacket and locked them around her wrists. “Hamilton, put her in the back of one of the cars and make sure she doesn’t make any more trouble.
As he turned away, running a hand through his light brown hair in irritation, she said quietly, her voice ominous and cold as ice, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
He turned and looked at her. “I’m doing this for your own good,” he replied.
“Put me down, please,” she ordered Hamilton, who quickly complied when he heard the authoritative note in her voice, but still staying close enough to grab her should she try to run off.
“I don’t have time for this-”
“And you think I do,” she said, interrupting him in a harassed voice that mirrored his own. “Now listen up, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. My name is Sailor Moon and I am the only thing that has the training, knowledge, and the power to deal with that creature in there that is currently draining the life force out of those people in that store. Now you can shove an iron shaft up your ass for all I care, but I’m not going to let you stop me just because your ego can’t deal with the fact that the only person capable of managing the situation happens to be wearing a miniskirt.”
Okay so Sailor Moon was bluffing a bit with the training and knowledge business, although she wasn’t totally without some skills. Back in middle school, she and Molly had taken a self-defense class when there had been a string of muggings in New Salem; the mugger didn’t take age into consideration and had mugged women of all ages, although thankfully he had never had attacked a child. She and Molly were never mugged and the mugger was eventually caught, but it had given her a sense of satisfaction to know she could protect herself if she had been put in that situation. She might be a bit rusty but she was sure she could make use of what she had learned in the self-defense class against that thing in the store.
Besides it was clear that she had powers. She had been able to successfully teleport hadn’t she? And with Luna as a passenger to boot. Fear for a friend had been a strong motivator for her to learn to access the powers that the cat had insisted she possessed and being an artist she had a good imagination so she could build the picture in her mind of where she wanted to go. She could have easily had teleported in the store, but it had occurred to her that the element of surprise would work better in her favor in her first fight as a Senshi.
So instead of appearing in All That Glitters she had chosen to teleport atop the roof of the small apartment building across the street. The landlord was the friendly sort who didn’t mind if kids hung on the roof (as long as they weren’t the party hard and drunk, high and disorderly type), so she and Molly had spent plenty of time on the roof to visualize it. Of course when she got there, she discovered that the door to the stairs was locked so she had been prepared to try teleporting again when Luna pointed out that she could easily jump down from the roof. That had led to “are-you-f-ing-out-of-your-mind” look at the cat, until said cat thought to add that Sailor Moon’s physical abilities were on the level of Power Rangers and Superman where she could jump off a building and not wind up with busted legs or cracked head on the sidewalk.
Even though the whole transformation and teleportation thing had work, it had taken another minute or two of encouragement from Luna and reminder of Molly being danger before Serena had taken a leap of faith, literally. She almost screamed on the way down, but something inside her took over and she landed gracefully on her feet like the Pink Ranger (Kimberly was so cool; yeah she had been a Pink Ranger fangirl, so sue her). Of course she hadn’t taken in consideration that the police would have gotten involved, stupid really considering she knew the store had a great security system and was certain some customer would have set it off after seeing Zombie Queen, so here she was bluffing and hoping it worked to get her out of these handcuffs.
Drake just gave her a look and made a mental note to give her family the name of an excellent psychologist.
Sailor Moon knew from the look on his face, as he left to sneak into the building, that he didn’t believe her and it totally pissed her off. Here she was trying to save the idiot and salvage the situation and he had her handcuffed! Okay, so she was a few years his junior (okay possibly more then a few, like six of seven) and looked more like a teenager then a responsible and mentally stable adult, not to mention that she was wearing an outrageous superhero costume that screamed male fan service, but hadn’t she just jumped off the damn roof of a five-story building without harming herself and looking like gold-medal Olympic gymnast??? How many women did he know that could pull that trick off?
‘Oh well, guess I’ll just have to do this the hard way then.’
Luckily Luna had thought to tell her about some of her powers before she had jumped off the roof. Reaching up, she pulled the tiara from her forehead. Even though she expected she was still stunned when it changed into what looked like the chakram that Xena from that old TV show used. Only difference was that hers was gold like the tiara had been. She heard Officer Hamilton gasp and glancing at him it looked like he was ready to birth to a litter of kittens; apparently he had seen what she had done. She ignored him, taking advantage of his surprise to maneuver the tiara chakram and cut threw the handcuffs like a hot blade through butter; as soon as the tiara had done its job and vanished and miraculously appeared back on her forehead.
As she straightened, Hamilton finally recovered enough to shout for the jerk. “Lieutenant Kavanaugh!”
“Sorry about the handcuffs!” she yelled over her shoulder as she entered the store from one of the front broken windows and then came to a quite startling realization.
She was totally and utterly terrified.
‘Just deal with it, Serena,’ she told herself furiously. ‘You have to just face your fears.’
Sailor Moon stepped careful over the broken glass still attached to the window frame. The monster was too busy draining a high school girl, which made her entrance virtually unnoticeable by everyone except Lieutenant Kavanaugh who looked ready to storm over to her side and throttle her had it not been the fact that he did not want to draw the monster’s attention to her or himself since he managed to get in without the damn thing noticing.
For a moment, she just stood there, frozen with indecision. When she had been facing Lieutenant Kavanaugh, she had acted confident and like she knew what the hell to do, but now that she had come face to face big, gray, zombie-dry skin, and butt ugly, she feared her knees were going to give out on her. In desperation, she reminded herself that she was a superhero and destiny made her capable of pulling this and not find herself being handed over to death on a silver platter and male fan service costume
“Selene, give me strength,” she whispered as she touched the tiara once more. It turned into the chakram form again and she began focusing on it as Luna had instructed her earlier. It began to glow as she took aim and then sent it flying across the room at the monster. Unfortunately for her, the creature had seen her out of the corner of its eye and jumped out of the way, but it had moved too slow and had lost half of its right arm.
Sailor Moon grinned. She could practically hear Lieutenant Kavanaugh’s jaw hit the tiled floor. She then shifted into a defensive stance that she had learned from her self-defense classes, the chakram tiara appearing in her hand once more.
The monster looked her up and down with disgust. “A mighty Sailor Senshi? Ha! You’re nothing more than a child!”
Sailor Moon decided that she had better thing to do with her time then argue with Zombie Queen. Besides to be perfectly honest, her vocal cords were frozen in fear. She began to focus her energy once more for another attack. But before she could finish, the mummified thing, using speed that Sailor Moon hadn’t thought it capable of, leapt over the prone bodies of its victims and landed before the Senshi of the Moon and knocked her tiara from her hand.
“Now you die, child, in the name of Her Majesty, Queen Beryl of the Dark Kingdom!”
Clinging to her last bits of her courage, Sailor Moon began to gather her power again, this time channeling it through her hands. Because she wasn’t like the other Senshi, as Luna had explained in her crash Senshi 101 class, Sailor Moon had to channel her magic through an object to attack. The tiara was supposed to serve as that her attack item. Yet Luna hadn’t said anything about her not being able to channel the magic through her hands. She could be wrong, but it wasn’t like she much of a choice at the moment since the tiara hadn’t returned to her.
‘Well, there’s a first time for everything...”
Just as the monster was about sink its claws into her, she raised her hands, yanking at the power inside of her into a ball of light between her hand and unleashed the deadly force held within them. She felt her skin burning with the red-hot power, but she kept blasting the thing with it until there was nothing left of it but dust. As the dust began to vanish into thin air, her knees finally gave out on her as she collapsed on the ground, cradling her hands to her chest. They felt as though she had stuck them into a fire.
~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~
If this didn’t give him gray hairs and an ulcer, nothing would.
Drake walked around the comatose bodies, stopping a few feet away from the girl who sat on the floor, hugging her hands to her. Although he couldn’t make out her face, her pain hung in the air like the smell of smoke from a cigarette or the remnants of a put out fire.
“Are you all right,” he asked, pushing back all his other thoughts other than her safety to the back of his mind. He could have his nervous breakdown later when he was alone in his apartment away from prying eyes.
It was absolutely unbelievable. If he hadn’t been standing there watching the scene play out, he would never have believed that it was possible. The whole concept of monsters and magic and superheroes was something he had believed when he was five, not twenty-six. He wondered if this was how Alice had felt when she got sucked into Wonderland or when Gullivar got washed onto the island of Lilliput.
He saw her tiara lying nearby among the remnants of a broken display case, glittering as brightly as the diamonds and other precious jewels it lay amongst. He picked it up, carefully holding it as far away from as physically possible. There was no mistaking this as a child’s toy, and he had seen what it was capable of. To be honest, it scared the shit out of him.
The clicking of heels on linoleum brought him out of his inspection of the staff. He glanced up to see Sailor Moon standing before him, holding out one hand out. Drake winced at the sight of her hand; the glove had burned away to the skin which was red and chapped as though it had been held over a source of extreme heat. He handed her back the staff and watched as it disappeared into thin air and then reappeared in tiara form on her forehead.
But he was more concerned with her hands to worry about vanishing and reappearing weapons. “That injury needs medical attention.”
“You have more important things to worry about. I’ll be fine. These people will recover. They’ve just had their energy stolen. Tell them to rest for the next few days and they’ll be as good as new.”
Sailor Moon then turned and glanced around her. Drake followed her gaze to see what was making her so skittish. He cursed under her breath as he saw some his people were moving cautiously toward the store while others were trying to hold back that crowd that was forming. A truck from Channel 29 News was pulling up and letting out cameramen and an anchorwoman.
“What was that thing?”
He turned back to Sailor Moon, but she was nowhere to be. The only thing around him was the bodies of a few dozen unconscious women.
“Damn I knew I should have called in sick today.”
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Deep in the shadows of the dark and cavernous room, sat a woman on a throne of black onyx. She stared pensively into a large and dark crystal ball that floated before her. Long wavy hair, the blood red of dark rubies, spilled to the floor, accented by the strapless black gown that clung to her voluptuous body. Her skin was unnaturally pale, as though she hadn't seen the light of the sun for centuries, and her eyes were a glowing red.
Hers was a beauty that was hard to forget, but it had taken her centuries for her regain it after she had lost it because of the wretched Moon Princess. Well technically she had been reborn again on Earth, but her beauty had not been the same; at least not until she reclaimed the power which she had lost thanks to that silver-haired bitch. Beryl's hands clenched into tight fists as the memory of her rival filled her mind.
"Serenity, that bitch," she hissed, her long red nails piercing her the palms of her skin and drawing blood.
Serenity had been the cause of her downfall. Her, her bitch of a mother, and her ever-faithful Senshi. They had destroyed her hopes... her dreams... Worse, Serenity had stolen the heart of the man Beryl had loved, and still loved, Prince Endymion of Earth.
But then Metallia had come. Metallia, her savoir. She had been the only one to believe in Beryl when everyone else had been against her. It was Metallia who had given Beryl the power to get revenge against the hateful Moon Kingdom and all those who allied with them.
Beryl let out a girlish giggle, relishing in the memory of pain and horror in Queen Serenity's eyes as she watched her daughter commit suicide before her very eyes. It was a cherished memory, the only remedy to ease the pain in her heart at Endymion's own death. He had died protecting Serenity, taking the fatal blow meant for the little bitch. It had been just as satisfying to see the Inner Senshi die at the hands of the men they loved who had betrayed them to serve her.
Of course, it hadn't been a voluntary action on their part. It had been quite a formidable task to brainwash them, even with the colossal power that Metallia had granted her. It had taken great amounts of energy and time to rid them of their loyalty to Endymion and love for their princesses. In the end, she had had not choice but to lock away nearly two thirds of their memories. But they had been the best damn investment she had ever made, the key to the downfall of Princess Serenity and the Silver Millennium. So it would be an understatement to say she had been pissed when they had been slain by the Moon Generals.
Beryl snarled, her face contorted in rage for a moment before calming down. There was no need for her to be angry since she now had her prized warriors back. All four generals had been reincarnated in present-day Earth and it taken little effort on her part to find them since their auras were so much more brilliant then those of ordinary humans. With a little brainwashing, she had brought them back to her side and had found that they were now more useful to her, particularly since she had allowed them to keep the identities of their reincarnated forms.
"Jadeite! Nephrite! Zoicite! Kunzite!" she called.
The four men shimmered before her, dressed in their somber gray uniforms.
"Yes, Your Majesty," they said in unison, kneeling before her.
"How is our progress in infiltrating the Earth," Beryl inquired.
"As of right now, we have begun the plan to gather energy as you have planned," Jadeite replied. "We’ve had one setback, which will be corrected immediately, but otherwise we have been successful."
"And why is that," Beryl demanded, her eyes flashing.
"A Senshi has awakened," answered Jadeite, lowering his eyes in submission. “The Senshi of the Moon.”
“Senshi of the Moon,” Beryl repeated, her aura flaring around her. “There is no Senshi of the Moon.”
“There is one now,” said Kunzite, meeting her eyes, a hint of defiance in his eyes. It was deliberate on his part to direct her anger at him and away from his subordinate, although the defiance had always been there even in the past. Out of the four generals, he was the one who worried her the most, because he was the most powerful and back in the Silver Millennium had been the one who had taken the most energy to convert to her side because his love for the Venusian Princess had been that strong. Even now, she was never quite sure if he was truly on her side.
“Watch yourself, Kunzite,” Beryl hissed, allowing him to get his way in this for now. “So now we have a fucking Sailor Moon. How do you plan to fix this setback? Or are you so weak that you can’t take care of one lone Senshi who’s so new that her boots are squeaking?!?!?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Nephrite answered quickly. “Sailor Moon will be dealt with immediately.”
“We will study and analyze her and take the appropriate measures to get rid of her,” Zoicite added, always the one to think of such things. “She was only successful because there has never been a Senshi of the Moon and had the advantage of surprise and being an unknown.”
'Serenity,' hissed Beryl's mind. 'You thought you could win by creating a new Senshi, didn’t you?.'
"Fine," she said aloud. "Do whatever needs to be done, just as long as you get rid of her! Do not fail me!"
'I won't let you win Serenity! This time Endymion will be mine and mine alone!’
~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~*=*~
“You did good, Serena,” Luna said, sitting outside the bathroom door while she waited for Serena to finish taking her shower.
As soon as they had teleported back to the dorm room, the girl had undid the transformation and declared a need for a shower before Luna could open her mouth to talk about a debriefing of what had happened. The cat didn’t push for Serena to wait for the shower, seeing something in the young woman’s eyes that made her understand that her charge needed this. The first battle was never easy, especially for one who had never been trained into this life.
The feline’s memories of the past were hazy, but she remembered enough to know that the other Senshi had brought up with the knowledge that they would one day have to go into battle. They had had the training. Serena had not. Luna had no clue who Serena had been in the past, but she was certain that the young woman had been a civilian before Queen Serenity and the other Queens had the foresight to create another Senshi to throw against Queen Beryl and the Dark Kingdom. It was tough but Serena would have to learn to adjust to the path that destiny had set out for her.
“It’ll get easier once we begin training, you’ll see.”
“Whatever you say Luna,” Serena replied, leaning her head against the cool wall of the shower as the water pounded down around her. She stared down at her hands; they had healed a little since she had gotten back from New Salem, the accelerated healing power of the fuku, or that was Luna’s explanation. She, herself, apparently had accelerated healing abilities as well since she had awakened as the Senshi of the Moon, but it was nowhere near the speed of when she was transformed. Made sense really; you had to heal fast while in the midst of battle otherwise the enemy would exploit the weakness. Luna had reassured her that they’d be healed by morning if not sooner.
She had never been as scared as she had been tonight. That thing… it had been like something out of a horror movie. Except with a movie you knew that it was fake and you could turn it off at any time when it got too much. But not that thing. Not until she destroyed it and she understood now that it wouldn’t be the last thing she fought. That there would probably be worse things and everything Luna had said earlier was true.
This was her destiny. No matter how much it scared her and made her run away and hide under the covers, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She was the chosen champion of the Moon and a protector of this planet. She had to fight and be strong, no matter the cost. But right now, here in the privacy of her shower, she didn’t have to be the strong Senshi. Just a young woman had lost a piece of her innocence.
Luna made a low noise of sympathy in the back of her throat, as she heard the muffled sobs of the young woman. ‘Destiny’ the cat thought, ‘was a cruel bitch.’
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Final Thought from Queen Beryl:
This time I will win, Serenity!
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Disclaimer: I do not claim any rights to Sailor Moon or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Takeuchi Naoko and anyone else she says has rights to it.
