Archive of Our Own

Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
October 11, 2016
8:03am ET

"Rob-san, who else is here?"

Rob looked at Usagi. "There's just the two of us in this room, Usagi-san. And if you aren't going to be late for your first day of school here, there should only be one person in this room."

"Oh! Leaving now! Bye!"

She headed for the door, stopping only to put on her coat and grab her school bag. Then she headed out the building's front door, ran down the walkway to the road, turned right, ran to the end of the road, waved to Minako waiting for the bus going in the other direction to the Canterbury performing-arts high school, cut through the Catholic basilica's parking lot and down the stairs on the far side of the lot to Bank Street and her own bus stop... making it with only seconds to spare.

"You're luckier than you have any right to be, Tsukino-san," Kuroko said as they got onto the bus. It was already standing-room-only. "Donaldson-san did warn us that the bus schedule was just a suggestion at this time of day."

"I know. I was distracted by a thought. We can't be the only people like us in this world, can we?"

"Saten-san would know better than I do," Kuroko replied. "She pays more attention to rumours than I care to."

A few minutes later, the bus was letting half of its passengers off at the Billings Bridge hub, which included the girls. They waited a few minutes for the bus that would take them to the corner of Bronson and Glebe, where their high school could be found.

"Shirai-san said to ask you, Saten-san. Are we the only people like us in this world?" Usagi asked Ruiko.

"I don't think so. Rob-oji had a meeting with people like him two weeks ago, and there wouldn't have been more people like him if there weren't more people like us."

"Is he keeping secrets from us?" Rei asked with some anger.

Mii shook her head. "He didn't keep anything secret from me."

"He likes you, Konori-sempai."

"He likes all of us. And I asked him weeks ago. Here's our bus."

They got seats close to the back door, although Mii stood because she would be getting off the bus when it stopped at Carleton University before reaching Glebe Collegiate. A quarter-hour later, everyone was where they were going that day.

Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa
Noon ET

They spent the day getting used to the North American school system. Unlike in Japan, the teachers stayed in their classrooms and the students moved around, surprising all of them. Once they discovered that, it didn't bother Usagi too much that Makoto, Rei, Mikoto, Kazari, or Ruiko weren't in her homeroom, or that she wasn't able to sit beside Kuroko in their homeroom. Moving around, she got to meet more classmates than she would have if she'd stayed in one place, although she wasn't able to get to know any of them at all well on their first day of classes. And, at least in the morning, she'd had a different one of her apartment-mates in each of her classes... and she discovered at lunch that she shared an afternoon class with Rei. The only person who she knew who she didn't have any classes with was Kazari.

"That's hardly a surprise," Rei pointed out when Usagi mentioned it over lunch. "Uiharu-san's in the science stream, while the rest of us are in the humanities stream. Speaking of Uiharu-san, here she comes now." Rei waved at Kazari, who walked over with an Asian girl who the others didn't know.

"Here you are! Everybody, this is Layla Nguyen; she's in my homeroom, English, and chemistry classes. Layla, this is everybody."

As the two of them sat down at the table that the other girls from Blossom Apartments were sharing, Layla pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose, then said, "Hi, everybody! If you're anything like Kazari, I know we're going to be friends."

Kazari smiled as she replied, "I'll let you decide that, Layla. On my left and going around the table, these are Ruiko Saten, Kuroko Shirai, Mikoto Misaka, Makoto Kino, Rei Hino, and Usagi Tsukino." Each girl bowed slightly as her name was said.

"No kidding?" Layla took a closer look at Usagi, Makoto, and Rei, and thus completely missed seeing one of the students at the next table over get up and head for the door. "The three of you certainly have the hairstyles."

"Hairstyles?" asked Kuroko.

"From the cartoon. Mom let me watch the DVDs of Sailor Moon when I was growing up, and Usagi, Rei, and Makoto all match the characters that share their names." She turned to the three Senshi. "You know, there is such a thing as taking a fandom too far." Then she smiled as she added, "Unless you actually are the people in the cartoon, in which case I'd have to ask where Minako and Ami are."

"Minako got into the performing-arts program at Canterbury, and Ami's skipped grades and is already in pre-med at the University of Ottawa," Usagi replied... a moment before she realized that she shouldn't have.

Layla nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense... wait a minute. Are you telling me that you really are Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Jupiter? Because I wasn't born yesterday."

"Layla, apply Occam's razor," Kazari said. "Which is more likely, that they're really good cosplayers who spend their entire lives in-character, or that they're the Sailor Senshi?"

"That they're cosplayers," Layla replied immediately. Then she frowned. "Although I did hear something about a teleporter saving somebody's life at the Bytown Museum two weeks ago."

"I can't take the credit for that," Kuroko replied. "I just got the AED from the front desk." As she noticed everyone else staring at her, she added, "I doubt we're going to be able to keep the secret for very long."

"And I don't remember anyone named Kuroko in the cartoon," Layla replied.

"They're called 'anime', not 'cartoons'," said the boy who'd abruptly left the room earlier, from right behind Layla and Kazari. "I know it's an intrusion, but..." he walked over to Mikoto. "Would you autograph this, please?"

They all looked at what he was holding: a copy of A Certain Scientific Railgun S Season 2 Part 2 — the one with Mikoto Misaka, Febrie, and Shinobu Nunotaba on the cover.

"See?" Kuroko said.

"I'm sorry," Mikoto replied without taking the DVD case, "but I don't give autographs."

As the boy walked away dejectedly, Kuroko continued, "A random student knows who we are."

"It doesn't help that you and Mikoto wore your Tokiwadai school uniforms to class today," Ruiko added.

"We always wear our uniforms," Mikoto said. After a beat, she added, "Although it looks like we don't have to do that here."

"Have I fallen down the rabbit hole?" Layla asked. "Are you really fictional characters?"

"I think I'm real," replied Makoto.

"Bigger than life and twice as cute," one of the boys at the next table over commented.

Rei scowled. "Dubois, this is a private conversation."

"Sorry."

Rei turned her attention back to the others. "He's one of Mako-chan and my homeroom classmates. I think his name is Zeke?"

"Zach," Makoto corrected her. She didn't notice that Zach smiled on hearing that Makoto remembered his name. "And I'm too tall to be cute."

"You aren't much taller than I am," Layla pointed out. "You're what, five-foot-seven?"

"Five foot eight-and-a-half. 174 centimetres."

"And I'm 168 centimetres tall, five-foot-six. At this school, I'm average height, so you're not noticeably tall here, Makoto."

"Layla, please call me Mako-chan. Everybody else does."

"Mako-chan's a cartoon character. I'm going to need to see some evidence before I accept that any of you are cartoon characters."

Kuroko said, "Hold out your hand, palm up." Layla did so... and was suddenly holding Kuroko's juice box. "Is that enough proof that I'm a teleporter?"

Shaken, Layla replied, "I'll... reserve judgment."

"No, no," Ruiko said with a grin. "Shirai-san and Uiharu-san are the Judgment officers."

From the next table over, the boy who didn't get an autograph asked, "Say, do any of you want to join the Glebe anime appreciation society?"

"No, I'm not interested in your cartoon club," Layla said before the others could react.

Kazari frowned for a moment, then forced herself to smile again. "I didn't know that there were otaku here, too. Are you world type or battle royale type?"

"I have no idea what that means."

Kazari's smile became genuine. "Oh, good. But I'm far too busy to join an art club."

"You should know better than to ask people in the university stream whether they want to join your club," Layla added.

Usagi looked puzzled. "University stream? Not science stream?"

Layla nodded. "That's what we call it here. Universities have four-year programs that need a lot of study and grant degrees, but they don't have to be science degrees. Colleges have two or three-year programs that still need some study and grant diplomas. I'm aiming for a degree in industrial chemistry, so I'm in the university stream here."

The girls continued talking about how school in Canada was different from school in Japan, apparently forgetting to answer the invitation to join the anime club.

Blossom Apartments
4:53pm ET

As the girls settled in to watch Washuu-chan give them their routine (for her) physical checkups, Usagi turned to Minako and asked, "So how was your first day at school?"

"Great! The photography club asked me to pose for a Botticelli pastiche..." She saw the looks on her friends' faces. "With my Senshi uniform on. I'll turn 16 at the end of next week, but that's still too young for nude pictures in Canada. I said yes less than five minutes after I met Ashley, and she shot a full roll of film before lunch break was over."

"But... but..." Usagi stammered.

"Why is she still using film? Ashley says it's an artistic choice."

"No, how did they know you're Sailor Venus?"

"Usagi, we're using our real names and we know there's an anime about us. It's not like we're trying to keep it secret, right?"