Daniel Smythe was one of the newest office workers at the radio station, KSTC otherwise known to those of Crystal City and the surrounding area as Crystallized. Being the new guy also meant that he was often the one blamed when things went wrong without a logical explanation to explain them or to at least point the blame at someone else. So he really wasn’t surprised when Jonas Meyers, the radio station manager hollered for him to get in his office, before his butt even had a chance to hit his desk chair that morning.
“You wanted to talk to me, sir,” Daniel asked, entering Jonas’s office and closing the door. If he was going to get reamed again, he’d prefer it if the rest of the guys at the station didn’t hear. There was only so much embarrassment a guy could take.
“Yeah, I did,” Jonas said, bending down and picking up a box of letters that he dropped on his desk. “Tell me why we’re getting all this fan mail for a program we don’t have.”
“Well it’s obviously some mistake, sir,” Daniel replied, wondering how exactly this was his fault. His job dealt with mostly updating the station’s web site and he certainly hadn’t added any info for new programs lately.
“Obviously,” replied Jonas with a heavy layer of sarcasm. “Fine out what’s going on. Now. Immediately. Like yesterday, Smthye.”
“Yes sir,” Daniel replied because it was the only answer he culd make without getting himself fired. It didn’t matter to Jonas that this wasn’t part of his job and that there were others in the office who responsible for this sort of thin. If he responded with anything but an affirmative, his ass would be fired; he had seen it happen to some other poor guy a few weeks ago. He picked up the box of fan mail, guessing that he’d be putting in some overtime today to take care of this problem plus his usual work. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Oh is that the mail for the new Midnight Zero broadcast, sir,” a female voice said from the doorway. Daniel and Jonas turned to see a beautiful, tall, and buxom redhead dressed in an emerald green two-piece suit. For a moment the men were stunned into silence by her beauty, before they recovered enough to react.
“You know about this fiasco,” Jonas demanded, clearly beautiful woman had little effect on toning down his asshole persona.
“Yes, I’ve been sent specially to start and deal with the Midnight Zero broadcast sir,” the redhead said, walking forward to shake Jonas’s hand. “I’m Flanna Jameson.” She turned to Daniel and sent him a sympathetic smile, as if she understood what he had just went through because of her. “Here, let me take that box. It’s my job to handle it anyway.”
“So headquarters sent you,” Jonas questioned, still not looking completely happy about that situation.
Flanna glanced at Jonas and smiled. “You could say that.”
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“Please oh please oh please,” Serena panted under her breath in a chant as she went tearing across campus as fast as she could, which thankfully was a helluva lot faster thanks to Luna’s grueling training sessions and being a newly awakened Senshi. Then again if it wasn’t for Luna’s training sessions, which had been moved to the night to avoid any more chance encounters with anyone who might hear and see the cat talk (the theory being if anyone who heard Luna at night would assume it was said by someone that they couldn’t see and not the cat), she wouldn’t have overslept this morning and not have to be racing like the hounds of hell were at hells to get to English 1101.
Then again if it had been one of Serena’s other classes, she wouldn’t be this upset about being late. However English 1101 was being taught by Cherise Harrington, AKA the Harridan, who had taught at Serena’s high school and for some ungodly reason couldn’t have stayed teaching high school students. Oh no, she had to move on up and become an English professor at Crystal City University and continue torturing her former students.
And for some unknown reason, since the first day Serena had walked into her freshman English class at New Salem High to the last day when Miss Harrington had been her homeroom teacher (which really sucked to have to spend two years in the woman’s English class and then the last two to have the woman as her homeroom teacher), the Harridan had it in for her. The slightest infraction and she found herself with detention. This was why, after she had learned that her English professor had been switched with the one she had registered for with Harridan, she had done her utmost best not to give the woman an opportunity to nail her again. She doubted that professors could give detention, but she wasn’t about to take a chance.
Serena turned a corner and flew up stairs, calling out “excuse me’s” as she moved past other students. With another sharp left turn she slid into the class, which was mostly full except for no Miss Harrington. The blonde glanced around sharply, because it wasn’t past the redheaded prof to sneak up behind her and yell at her, she had done it often enough back in high school; however there was no sign of the woman. Sighing with relief, Serena slid into her seat next to Molly. Molly had an early morning volleyball class on Wednesdays and Fridays, which was why she hadn’t been around to wake Serena up that morning.
“So where’s Miss H,” Serena asked. It was never wise to use Harridan’s nickname if there was a chance that the woman could be around. She’d made the mistake only once in high school and suffered detention for two whole weeks for it. The blonde glanced at the wall clock and noted that it was one minute after the start of class, which meant she had gotten exactly on time, although Miss H would probably still count it against her that she wasn’t early. “She’s never late.”
“No clue,” Molly replied, nail file in hand and fixing any chips she might have incurred in volleyball. “She didn’t say anything about being absent today last week, which she would have considering how anal she can be about details. Besides she would have made sure we had a substitute and most subs are early or exactly on time.”
“I hope she’s not absent today,” a voice suddenly said over their shoulders. The two women reacted by jumping and then turned in unison to glare balefully at the young man who had dared to enter their conversation. Melvin Moore had been a classmate of theirs since kindergarten and the class geek just as long. He also had been crushing on Serena just as long; some days it was kinda of sweet and pathetic since she would never return his feelings and other days she was tempted to throttle him (or now use her Moon Tiara although she doubted Luna would let her get away with that).
“MELVIN DON’T SNEAK UP ON US,” Serena and Molly yelled in unison. There was no fear over Miss H showing up and scolding them for that. If there was one thing Cherise Harrington understood, it was the irritation that Melvin Moore could be.
“Sorry guys,” replied Melvin, clearly unperturbed by being yelled at since he was used to it after all these years. “It’s just that Miss H promised me that I could read my report on yellow earth worms in class today.”
The two co-eds exchanged glances and wondered what the woman had been on when she had agreed to that particular request. Yellow earth worms? Gross to the max!
Before they could say anything, the class grew silently. They all turned and watched as Miss Harrington entered in the room in what could only call a very half-hearted shuffle. Her face was abnormally pale, which was enhanced even more by her bright red suit that had a purple flower pinned to the lapel of the suit jacket, and the dark circles under her eyes.
“She doesn’t look so good,” Molly whispered to Serena, who nodded in agreement.”
“Hi,” Miss Haruno said after she was behind the podium. “Anyone not present raise your hand now.” She sighed and then crossed her arms on the podium before dropping her head down onto them and staring at the class with half-open eyes. “Oh who cares? Read chapters one to thirty-five of any book you have on you and when class it over wake me up.” She yawned. “Good night everybody.”
“Yeah that’s not normal,” Serena said, as she watched her professor slide to the floor in a deep slumber. ‘And I may be new at this, but this says Dark Kingdom all over it…’
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“That was so weird,” commented Serena as she and Molly headed back to their dorm with Melvin tagging along like a leech. Honestly, he wouldn’t be so bad if he would just give up this crush on her and stopped attaching himself to her for hours on end before she could shake him off. “I mean teachers just don’t fall asleep like that. It’s just not that natural.”
“Maybe she has a sleeping sickness,” Melvin suggested, shooting Serena a glance to see if she was impressed by his suggestion. Or maybe she had noticed that he was slightly more buff now then he had been in high school; he had noticed that the blonde tended to go for more muscular men. To be more precise, she seemed to be more attracted to them although his notes on her indicated that she had never dated any guy seriously and she usually attended dances with her girlfriends instead of a date.
“Nah, knowing Miss H she was probably stayed up too late listening to that new show, Midnight Zero,” Molly said. “You know she’s such a romantic type. Besides I’m pretty sure it was her letter that was read last night.”
“Midnight Zero,” questioned Serena. “And what letter of Miss H was read last night?”
“It’s a new show that was recently added to Crystallized’s new night line up,” answered Melvin, once again proving not only that he was a know-it-all geek but a know-it-all gossip. It didn’t help in his favor when he whipped out a notepad, the kind you saw reporters and cops use, and flip through a few pages before he paused on to read whatever was written.
“Midnight Zero first hit the airs exactly two weeks ago. The host is called J Dite and has a voice that has been described to sound like smooth velvet which the ladies find sexy. Personally I don’t see it.” Melvin glanced up at the girls, hoping to get an agreement, however Serena had no opinion on the subject as she had never heard J Dite’s voice and Molly clearly disagreed. “Anyways, if your letter is read on the air, you’re guaranteed to receive a romantic prize the next day. I haven’t been able to verify what the prize is but I’m betting that new flower pin that Miss Harrington was wearing was it as the details of the letter read last night sound similar to the situation between Miss Harrington and her former love interest of two years ago that ended when said interest was supposedly cuddling up to the substitute home economics teacher, Miss Jenson.”
Serena and Molly exchanged a look that clearly said ‘Stalker much?’ However, they really couldn’t complain as Melvin’s ability to sniff out details was fairly useful at times. Useful enough that being reminded of it made Serena think she probably use Melvin as a source of information if anything weird occurred. Course, the problem with this was pumping him for info without him thinking it was encouragement that she was developing those kinds of feelings for him.
‘A problem for another day,’ thought Serena. ‘But thanks to Melvin I have a better idea of where to investigate Miss H’s sleeping issues. No way is that normal. I’m going to have to talk to Luna as soon as I can get Molly out of our room.’
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“That does sound suspicious,” Luna said thoughtfully, a few hours later which was the soonest that Serena had been able to bring it up since Molly had hung around their dorm room until she had left for her Biology class. “I’m sure the Dark Kingdom is up to something again. I’ve checked out the situation with your friend’s mother’s store. The events leading up to your first battle show that the youma took the place of your friend’s mother to make use of the jewelry store and that sale to attract humans to gather energy. This is possibly another energy gathering plan.”
“What do they need with the energy,” asked Serena, sprawled on her bed and working on her math homework. “Seems like they were plenty energetic without stealing somebody else’s to me!”
“Hmmm… I’ll have to ask Central Control about this,” Luna said. “They’ll probably have more information as to the reasons why the Dark Kingdom is after energy. I wish I had the answer myself, but I only awakened a few months ago myself and I don’t have all my memories of the past and the ones I do are a bit hazy still.”
“Well if the Dark Kingdom is behind Miss H passing out today, we need to check it out,” the blonde said, glancing up from a particularly irritating problem. “Miss H may be a pain in the ass, but she certainly doesn’t deserve being sucked dry of her energy from evil scum bent on world domination.”
“This isn’t going to be an easy situation to investigate Serena,” pointed out the cat. “If he had an opportunity to do so beforehand, we could have probably checked up on the situation of your friend’s store earlier due to your connection. But a radio station is a different can of tuna.”
Serena smiled at the feline metaphor. “No worries there, Luna. Midnight Zero’s host is supposed to have an uber sexy voice that drive women wild. Plus I’m blonde and people expect blondes to be ditzy fangirls. I’ll just go over there and play up the stereotype by pretending to want to meet this J Dite character to see if we can score some information. In fact, we can do it right now.”
“Don’t you have math homework you still need to finish,” countered Luna. While she approve of the dedication that the Senshi of the Moon was applying to her mission, particularly considering her views on fighting in the first place, she still couldn’t allow her charge to forgo her responsibilities as a college student. There would hopefully be one day when Sailor Moon wouldn’t need to fight constantly and could live the life of a normal young woman and the day that come, Serena needed the skills to stand up on her own two feet since being a Senshi didn’t include a paycheck and benefits. “You do have that class this afternoon.”
“I’m almost done, Luna,” retorted Serena, placing her homework in her math book to mark her place before slamming it shut. She bounced off the bed and stretched. “Just a few problems left and that class isn’t for hours. It won’t take us that long to go downtown to the station and snoop around a bit. Come on, a little break to do Senshi work won’t hurt.”
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“Are you positive,” Serena questioned the station guard at Crystallized, even though she was pretty sure he was ready to kill her for bugging him for the past fifteen minutes. However, it was beyond her comprehension that Melvin was wrong on his info about the Midnight Zero program. While he could sometimes be wrong on his academics, rare as that was, and his speculations and theories about certain topics, he was NEVER wrong when it came to cold hard facts like the information about a new popular radio broadcast.
“For the thousandth time,” the guard snarled, clearly no longer charmed by an attractive but ditzy blond fan girl who had suddenly appeared in his life. “There is no program called Midnight Zero at this station. Now go home!”
“Geez, you don’t have to be so mean,” retorted Serena, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she’d seen some of the sorority girls do when in a huff. She didn’t blame the guy for getting annoyed and she would have normally apologized, but she had to stay in characters as crazy obsessed fan just in case this really was a Dark Kingdom issue and they were watching. “I’m going.”
She turned and pretended to storm away in indignant huff and because she was glancing over her shoulder at the guard, wondering if perhaps he was a youma in disguise (because it really made no sense that Melvin would be off on this particular issue), she walked into a human version of a brick wall. And because it was a human brick wall and not an actual brick wall, the impact force had her falling backwards. Had it not been for said brick wall’s arms she would have found herself on her ass.
“Owww,” she groaned. “Sorry about that.”
“You know Meatball Head, if you paid more attention to where you were going and instead of scowling at the poor guard you were harassing,” a familiar male voice said, “then you wouldn’t be running into people.”
The blonde’s head shot up and glared up at Darien Shields, who clearly couldn’t decide to be nice or a jerk!
“I told you not to call me that!” she growled. “I thought were supposed to be friends now! Friends don’t call each other insulting names.”
“It’s not really insulting when you hair does-” Darien started to say, before she cut him off.
“Don’t say it again!”
“-resemble-”
“I mean it, Darien.”
“-a pair of meatballs with spaghetti attached it.”
“ARGH!”
“Besides it seems kind of fitting now considering the way you just acted with that guard. I hadn’t pinned you for so crazy obsessed stalker type over some radio personality.”
He had her there. She couldn’t deny her behavior earlier had been less then…. well really there were no words for it. And it wasn’t like she could explain her reasons for acting the way she did. He was right; only a complete and utter meatball head would act so ditzy and stupid over a guy she hadn’t seen.
“Whatever,” she snapped; he may have been right but that didn’t mean she had to like it. “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything!” She moved around him and stormed off for real, irritated with the turn of events and discovering no clues to link the Dark Kingdom to the Midnight Zero.
However, if she was really honest with herself, she was more irritated that she had left another bad impression with Darien once more. She had never really gotten to explain to him about that horrible French quiz grade. Well there really wasn’t much to explaining to that; she sucked at French but she wasn’t stupid which could be one impression that he had of her. Nor did she have bad aim or assaulted people with paper balls on a regular basis or anything. And she certainly wasn’t some silly ditz of a fan girl.
Yet those were all the sorts of impressions she had been giving him, which bothered her because he was the first guy she had ever found herself attracted to. Well except for Andrew, her boss, at the Crown Center which was a popular arcade and café here in Crystal City that was frequented by the high school and college crowds. But she was fairly certain that Andrew just thought of her as an employee and friend or maybe like a little sister. The latter was fairly likely since she was only a year younger then Andrew’s baby sister, Elizabeth who was a waitress at the Crown Center like Serena.
And now there was another guy that she was attracted to and she was coming off as complete blonde ditz. Life really was unfair. But then again maybe it was best that Darien didn’t really have a good opinion of her. With the changes in her life lately, she really didn’t need a boyfriend to distract her.
It was logical and smart. She had enough on her plate with college and fighting world dominating evil (or was that world destroying evil, she really wasn’t sure but did it really matter when evil was evolved to distinguish between the two?). Despite telling herself this and knowing it to be smart advice, some part of her protested her decision. That she was deliberating tearing asunder the fabric of time and space or destroying her destiny; but wasn’t her destiny to be Sailor Moon?
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Final Thought from Darien:
Meatball Head…. you're a strange girl…
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Author’s Note:
Okay, I have yet to find a grammar Beta to work with, so I apologize for any typos and other kinds of mistakes. I read and reread this chapter until my eyes got all cross-eyed to make sure I could find all the mistakes
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Thanks again to everyone who reviewed or added this story as a favorite or alert.
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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.