Chapter Text
It had been a very bad night for Sailor V.
She ran down a dark Tokyo alley, fleeing from a fight that should have been an easy win. She’d been after the monster all night: chasing it all the way to the industrial harbor in Ariake. There, she’d finally cornered it in a warehouse when a knight of the Dark Kingdom had arrived. After Artemis had gotten hurt, she’d been forced to retreat without even defeating the monster she’d so painstakingly tracked. And now she was alone—no one was coming to save her.
Her tomcat mentor, Artemis, was unconscious, his hind leg twisted backwards and his limp body haphazardly wrapped around her shoulders. To make matters worse, blood was seeping through the makeshift bandages wrapped around her own wound: a deep laceration just above her hip where the knight's attack had hit her. Searing pain shot its way up her body with every step she took. Never in her two years as the guardian of love and justice had Sailor V been beaten this bad.
Her run slowed to a walk, then a limp, as her legs turned to jelly. She was forced to stop, lightheaded and gasping for breath, and slumped down against the wall of the office building she was behind. Perhaps the back door to the building was unlocked, but she doubted she could get up even if it were opened. More than likely, she would never get up. With trembling hands, she slowly placed Artemis in her lap and began to stroke his soft, white fur, smoothing out the places where it had become matted with her blood. Some vigilante of justice she was—some false Moon Princess.
The tears started slow and hot. She had only made it through the past months of fighting because of her newly-awakened memories of her past life. Of her princess and her fellow guardians. Could you love people you had never met?
Venus took a shuddering breath. Now she would never meet them. She would never get to know them again or fight for them the way Venus had a lifetime ago, throwing herself into battle for her princess. Instead, she would die failing to kill a low-rate monster.
Perhaps it was destiny, a part of her reasoned. Perhaps her sacrifice would pave the way for the others to win this ancient war.
What would that mean, though, for the role given to her? If she perished, the enemy would know that they had been duped, that she wasn’t the princess they so persistently sought. If that happened, their attention might fall on the other guardians.
The air above her distorted as the knight of the Dark Kingdom materialized, hovering above the alley. His narrow, handsome face contorted into a sneer.
“Well, well, Sailor V, or should I say Moon Princess?” From the light spilling out of the buildings’ windows, Venus could see that his long blond hair—almost auburn in the dark of the night—still perfectly framed his face, his uniform unwrinkled and unmarred, despite their intense fight less than an hour earlier. He continued to taunt her, “Either way, the jig is up. You might have escaped me once, but you have nowhere to run now. I’ll delight in exterminating you.” A long dagger of some crystalline material formed above the knight’s extended, gloved hand. “Hand over the Legendary Silver Crystal to me and I promise you won’t die too painfully.”
Venus glared at the knight, tears now flowing freely down her face. She had lost her mask at some point during the battle. She’d do what she could to fight to the bitter end, but that probably wasn’t much in her state. With any luck, he would be too distracted to pay attention to Artemis.
“I see how it is, Sailor V. I hope you enjoy your slow death. Zoi–”
A disc of golden light shattered the dagger the moment before it flew at her. The disc swung around like a boomerang and flew out of sight.
The knight spun around, a snarl on his face. “Who’s there? Who did that?”
A shout rang out from the roof of a nearby building, “How dare you cause chaos in the streets of Tokyo and ruin an innocent girl’s dinner? I will never forgive you! In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!”
Venus’s heart sank. That made everything much worse. It was too soon. The boss had told her it wasn’t time for them to meet yet. While the knight was distracted with Sailor Moon, she had to get away. But Artemis was still not awake, and she couldn’t seem to move her body. Maybe she could talk her way out of it. She could say he was a cosplayer–
“And in the name of Mars, I’ll chastise you!” came a second voice.
Venus should have been elated. Her odds of surviving the night had just increased. But her chances of keeping her cover had diminished to almost nothing. With just Sailor Moon, she might have been able to de-transform and play it off, but the other guardians were sure to ask questions and see through her blatant lies.
Meanwhile, the knight seemed to have entirely forgotten her. Dark energy crackled all around him as he faced off with Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars.
“Hello there, Sailor Guardians. I was here on other business, but this should be the perfect time to finally kill you!”
“As if! Fire Soul!!” The knight dove to narrowly dodge a fireball.
He cackled, “Nice try. Now, it’s my turn!” The energy around him intensified. Venus could hear a humming in the air. Before he could unleash his attack, something red flashed past his face. Rose petals fluttered down onto Venus. One landed on Artemis’s nose and the cat sneezed, his eyes fluttering open.
“M..Minako..?”
She blinked back fresh tears. He was in rough shape, but she was glad Artemis was awake. She felt a little less alone.
Above them, the knight shrieked effeminately. “How dare you cut my face? I’ll kill you for this! I’ll kill you all!” He summoned a storm of crystalline daggers and hurtled them out of sight. Venus heard the sounds of glass shattering and shouts of surprise from out on the main street.
While his back was turned, a second fireball struck him. He spun around in time to dodge the same disc of light.
“I’ll.. I’ll get you for this,” he huffed, “Kunzite will know what to do.” The air around him shimmered like flower petals and the knight was gone.
Another male voice spoke from above her, “Great work, Sailor Moon, love overcomes all trials. Now adieu.”
While Sailor Moon cried out for the unknown man to wait, Venus had forced herself to her feet. She staggered towards the end of the alley, cradling Artemis in her arms. Her body felt feverish and every breath she took had a ragged quality to it.
“C’mon Artemis, we’ve got to get away. I need to meet them on my own terms.”
Artemis said nothing, licking her hand gently. She could hardly stand the worried, pitying expression on his face.
Venus was only a couple feet from the main street and her escape when she heard the sounds of two people landing in the alley behind her.
A voice cried out, “Wait!”
Venus froze, but didn’t speak.
“Who… Who are you?” asked Sailor Moon.
She was saved from answering by the arrival of a black cat and the other two guardians: Mercury and Jupiter from down the alley.
“Sailor Moon, we took care of the rampaging monster. It looks like someone else fought it before us but…” The cat trailed off like she was going to say more, but at that moment, she noticed Venus. “S-Sailor V?”
The guardians gasped in surprise and worse, recognition. Venus couldn’t move her mouth to say anything. The dizziness she had been feeling was rapidly overtaking her body and the ground was very suddenly right in front of her face. It was just her luck that she would lose consciousness right then. Some heroic leader she was; the other guardians would think she was weak before they even knew her. On that unfortunate thought, Minako’s world went dark.
One moment, Artemis was staring at Luna in shock. The next, he was falling. He yowled as fresh, sharp pain shot up from his broken leg.
“Artemis!” Luna wailed and ran over to him. “What’s wrong? What happened?” Her expression said the rest: this wasn’t the plan. Artemis winced, both from the pain and the shame of failure.
“We.. were after a monster, but then that… man appeared.”
“Zoisite. We’ve seen a lot of him,” Sailor Jupiter interjected. Her and the other guardians had crouched around the unconscious girl and her cat. Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars were looking over the de-transformed Minako, inspecting her hastily-bandaged wound with worry written all over their faces, as Sailor Moon watched on, looking like she was about to cry.
Artemis nodded, “One of the four Heavenly Kings of the Dark Kingdom, he said. Min– I mean Sailor V tried to fight him, but he’s strong. And after I got hurt, she.. She risked too much protecting me and got herself hurt too…” He sighed. “Thank you for saving us, but we weren’t supposed to meet you like this.”
Sailor Moon looked at him curiously, “What do you mean?”
Luna answered for him, “We didn’t think you were ready yet.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Sailor Mars asked with a glare.
“We’ve all been fighting the same monsters!” Sailor Jupiter protested.
“Yes, but the timing had to be perfect. This… this isn’t any way to meet the Moon Princess.”
Artemis glanced at Luna with his head slightly tilted. Were they really keeping to that plan after what had happened that night? That would make it much harder for Minako.
The others missed the look, they had turned to Minako with renewed expressions of awe, but Artemis thought he saw some doubt on Sailor Mars’s face.
“Girls, this injury is serious, we need to get her treated,” Sailor Mercury interrupted.
“Right!” Sailor Mars abruptly stood up. “Enough sitting around then. We can take these two to the Hikawa Shrine for first aid and go from there!” She helped carefully hoist Minako onto Sailor Jupiter’s back as Sailor Mercury gently picked up Artemis, careful about supporting his broken leg. He gritted his teeth through the pain. The four de-transformed to draw less attention, and set off. Artemis sighed; this night was not going well at all, but at least they were alive.
In the dream, Minako was wearing her Sailor V costume, but she felt none of the power that came with being the guardian of justice. And she was somewhere she had not been in her current life.
The marbled pillars around her rose in strange shapes and stretched into obscurity above her. The shining domes of Silver Millenium were shattered, their brilliant light faded, and everything around her was burning.
Minako tried taking deep breaths to calm herself down, but it wasn’t working. The fear was filling her, bubbling up like vomit from her mouth; like oil out of the earth. She could almost see it, shining black and viscous, clogging her throat. Around her, people screamed as they killed and as they died. The sound was simultaneously deafening and hushed in her ears. And above it all, a wicked shadow loomed over the palace like a funerary pall, cackling. As she met its eyes, red as blood, the silver brick pathway below her feet crumbled away into dust and Minako Aino fell into the moon.
She woke up screaming, in an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar bed, tangled in unfamiliar sheets and clutching her head in both of her hands. Her clothes were plastered to her skin with sticky sweat, and her cheeks were covered with tears. The wound on her side felt like fire, aching even more than when she had originally been wounded. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the drawn shades above the bed.
Minako tasted metal. She must’ve bitten the insides of her mouth at some point. She took a deep breath. In through her nose.
Hold.
Out through her mouth.
Like every night she had awoken from a horrible nightmare over the past few months. They were frequent, but had never been so vivid. Some of the fear had stilled in her belly, but other than that, the breath hadn’t helped much. She was still trembling uncontrollably and her mouth was dry, her heart pounding in her ears.
Where was Artemis ? He was always there when she had one of her nightmares. She rolled over to look around the room and flinched as she came face-to-face with a girl about her age standing over her. The girl’s violet eyes shined and her eyebrows were furrowed in a worried expression. She had beautiful raven hair and wore a shrine maiden’s white kosode and red hakama . Her other visitor was a black cat with a crescent-shaped bald spot, perched on her shoulder wearing a matching worried expression. If Minako had not had years of experience with weird cats, she might have been surprised by its human-like behavior.
Minako spoke first. “Sorry, I kinda ruined your sheets.” She lifted the blanket to show where she had bled through her bandages onto the lavender fitted sheet.
“Don’t worry about it, I can wash them. How are you feeling?”
“I–” Minako began coughing violently. As soon as the fit had stopped, she looked back at the girl, her face flushed. She found she was still trembling, and felt feverish as well. Minako flinched, feeling a cool touch on her forehead. The mysterious girl
(who is she? Why does she seem so familiar?)
pulled back her hand, pursing her lips.
Minako managed a smile, though she expected it looked pretty pathetic. “Being tended to by a shrine maiden is pretty nice. What’s it looking like, ma’am?”
“You have a bad fever. Ami says it’s probably whatever Zoisite impaled you with, because the wound itself doesn’t appear to be infected.”
“Wow, you’re checking me out? At least ask my name first!” Minako’s grin felt more like a grimace to her, but she kept up with the teasing. Something about the girl made her want to keep making jabs at her, even if she’d just met her, and Minako hated that worried expression on her face. The girl just rolled her eyes.
The cat jumped down from the girl’s shoulder and onto Minako’s covers. She felt the familiar weight of a cat standing on her legs and was reminded of every time Artemis had to wake her up in the mornings. Minako figured the cat was Luna. She had never met Sailor Moon’s partner, but knew that her and Artemis had been in frequent communication since her memories of her past life had awakened during the final battle against the Dark Agency.
“Anyways, thank you for looking after me. May I ask where I am?” She made a show of looking around the room.
“You’re at my family’s shrine. I’m Rei Hino.”
“Ah, Sailor Mars. Nice to meet’cha.” Minako put on a friendly smile.
Rei gave her a strange look. Was there frustration Minako saw in it?
“You sure seem to know a lot about me.”
“I–”
Luna interrupted, “Rei, you should show more respect than that to the Moon Princess.”
Oh, so she was still supposed to be playing the role of Princess Serenity. The thought of her earlier teasing suddenly made her face flush in embarrassment.
Rei gave Luna a look bordering on a glare, “Thank you, Luna. Now why don’t you go check on Artemis?” Some of the hair stood up on Luna’s neck. She dipped her head to Minako and softly padded out of the room, slipping through the half-open door.
“Sorry about that,” Rei’s expression softened, but she still seemed frazzled, “There’s just a lot about this that I really don’t like, but I shouldn’t vent about my problems to a princess…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Minako put on a fake smile, “When I’m in my civilian disguise, you don’t have to be so formal to me. What’s the matter?”
“Oh.. Well, I have to skip school to play nurse so I’m missing a test. Plus, I’m not exactly Ami; one basic first aid class is not enough to properly deal with this. What Zoisite did to you is not exactly basic.” Her voice started to rise, “And those cats are being so cryptic about all this. It’s like they know so much that we don’t. For the longest time, Luna has been urging us to find this ‘missing’ Moon Princess. Then, it turns out that she is you, Sailor V. And somehow, Luna knew that. And had contact with you—the aforementioned missing princess, who was missing!”
Minako felt a bit sick; she knew far too well that she had played a part in Rei’s frustration, but still, she had to keep up the role required of her. She forced herself to take on a more regal air and even let out a giggle, pitching up her voice, “Well, this was actually the first time I’ve ever met Luna. She only spoke with Artemis, and rarely at that. We—they just wanted to wait until you four were ready to reveal ourselves.”
Rei’s expression darkened, “And what exactly does that mean? It’s all you three have been saying! We’ve defeated two of those four ‘Heavenly Kings’ without you, and have stopped all of the Dark Kingdom’s plots that have come up on our own. We can all fight just fine. If it mean waiting for Usagi to grow up and actually be a leader, that’s not happening any time soon.”
“Right…” Inside, Minako wanted to melt into the bed. The crushing weight of her deception was heavier than it had ever been. More than ever, she wanted to shout that she was supposed to be their leader. She’d thought she would be ready to lie to the other guardians when the time came. If only Rei and the others had their memories of their past lives. She was just perpetuating the same exact secrecy that had frustrated her to no end since she had awoken as Sailor Venus.
Still, rather than letting her despair show, Minako put on what she hoped was a mysterious expression. “Don’t worry, Ms. Hino, I promise you’ll understand in time.” She tried to put as much of her true feelings into the ‘in time’ as would be safe. She had to play the part of the princess as best as she could. At least until the true Princess Serenity discovered her true identity. After that, she could be herself finally, Minako hoped.
Rei glared at her, and Minako’s heart sank; she had not picked up on Minako’s emphasized words.
“Maybe you’re just as bad as those silly cats. Would you kindly hold still while I change your bandages, princess?” Minako did so, wondering how she could hope to improvise after being so forcibly diverted from the script the boss and Artemis had laid out for her; and how she could hope to regain the girls’ trust when the time came to reveal herself now. Back when they had proposed the decoy princess plan, it had seemed a lot easier and a bit of fun. She had said it would be good practice for when she became an idol, and she’d wanted to do anything she could to help her princess and the others.
Rei stepped back after finishing changing her bandage, “There you go.” Minako’s side ached worse than ever, but she tried not to let it show on her face; a princess could not show such weakness.
“Thank you.”
Rei frowned, “I have to go tend to the shrine, but I’ll be back to check on you later. The others will be here after school gets out as well, maybe you can explain things better once we’re all together.
“Thank you…” Minako repeated.
Rei stepped out of the room and quietly slid the door shut behind her. Before she did, Minako thought she heard her huff. As soon as she was gone, Minako shut her eyes and let her miserable thoughts consume her.
An hour or so later, Minako heard the other girls arrive, but they did not immediately come into her room. Minako figured they must be having their own private meeting. When they did enter, she feigned sleep, even when she heard the worry in Artemis’s voice as he called to her. She didn’t think she could stand what he might say to her—what questions they all might ask.
She did not stir even after they took their conversation back out of the room under the pretense of letting her sleep. Even though she tried, she was unable to fall asleep. There was a wall far thicker between the one separating her room and the wall blocking her from those she should have been endlessly elated to finally meet. She felt a pit of emptiness just below her heart, a feeling of isolation and loneliness far greater than she had ever felt before.
Mrs. Aino sat in her kitchen, watching the clock. After a moment, she sighed and crossed the room. As she pulled open her daughter’s door, she called,
“Honestly, Minako, even if it is the weekend—” She was immediately shocked into silence. Minako’s room was empty, the bed made. This was new; Mrs. Aino was aware her daughter often came home late at night, but never before had Minako snuck out early in the morning—she always slept in on the weekends. Though, come to think of it, she hadn’t seen her daughter Friday morning either, or the night before.
Mrs. Aino went to the phone and dialed Minako’s friend Hikaru’s household. After that call, she sat down with a deep sigh. No, Minako hadn’t shown up to school yesterday. No, Hikaru hadn’t heard from her. According to her, Minako had been distant from her for a while too—since the new term had started. Honestly, with her attitude, Minako might even flunk out. But there was nothing Mrs. Aino could do about that at the moment. She would have to confront her when she got home. She sat back at the kitchen table and opened the morning paper. The first absence of a report on Sailor V’s nightly exploits in two years went entirely unnoticed by her.