Chapter 1 - The Return of Sailor V
The building in the east village of Manhattan was pre-war. Looking at it from the outside, it almost looked like it was pre Civil-war. The rusty fire-escapes looked like they were about to fall off. There was graffiti all over the brick-layered building. It looked like the kind of apartment a whore house would operate out of. This was not the ideal kind of place a single girl would want to live. Luckily, the five girls moving in were not only strong, but they were Sailor Scouts!
The multi-story building was not so glamourous inside either. But Raye and Mina ignored it while walking up to the top floor. Both of them were holding hands excited to be in New York City. Each of them carried a small bag. Behind them, Lita had a large bag in her hands while Amy had a backpack. Far behind both of them was Serena who was struggling to lug four bags up the stairs. She continued to moan in pain.
"Uh," Serena finally blurted out, "Is anybody gonna HELP ME?!"
"Serena," Raye turned to see her princess, "I think we all agreed that each one of us in responsible for our own luggage."
"But I have more than you guys!" She whined.
"Then that's too bad!" Raye mocked and came to the top of the stairs.
"God I hate you guys so much!"
Raye opened the door to their apartment. The building may have been a hunk of junk, but the apartment was surprisingly well maintained.
"Hey," Mina said, "Not too shabby." Mina put her bag down and looked out the window. "Wow, look at the view. Hey Raye, where's the Empire State building?"
"I dunno," Raye said from the bedroom, "Ask Amy."
Amy and Lita had just entered the room.
"The Empire State Building," Amy said putting her bag down, "Is up on 34th street. I don't think we can see it from here."
"Oh!" Mina said pointing her finger, "But I can see it, right there!"
"Really?" Amy asked.
Lita moved over towards the window. "No," Lita said, "That's just some crap on the window." Lita wiped it off with her jacket and walked into one of the bedrooms.
Sounds of panting and pain entered the room as Serena dropped all the bags and collapsed onto the floor.
"Hey," Serena said, "Thanks for helping me Amy! You're supposed to be my girlfriend, God Damn-it!"
"Oh I'm sorry I forgot," Amy said as she moved in her direction.
Serena smiled and held her hand out for Amy to pull her up. Instead, Amy picked up one of the bags and placed it on the table. Serena scowled.
The Brainiac opened the bag to have Luna and Artemis popping out gasping for air.
"Oh God!" Luna said finally relieved to be out of that bag.
"Luna," Amy said, "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," Luna said panting.
"Artemis?" Mina asked her cat. Raye came out of the bedroom to see the cats.
Artemis moaned, "Having Serena's sweaty socks in my face for 12 hours is a fate worse than death!"
"Hey!" Serena scowled.
"Sorry about that guys," Raye said, "But it would have been a huge hassle to get you guys through customs. Foreign cats with crescent moons on their foreheads would not go unnoticed."
"Yes," Amy said, "American security has become very rigid in the past decade, especially for New York City."
"Why?" Serena asked, "What happened in New York City?"
Raye and Amy looked at Serena as if she was the dumbest person on Earth.
Mina was too awestruck staring out the window. She opened it to get a bird's eye view of the street. To her shock, an old lady was being mugged by a man in black, in broad daylight! Yet no one helped her. She watched as the thief ran off with the old lady's purse. Mina had heard stories of crime in New York City, but she didn't expect to see one already! Out of sheer outrage. Mina grabbed her Sailor Pen and began to storm out of the apartment.
"Mina?" Raye said amidst a heated argument with Serena. Mina ignored her lover and continued to storm out the door, until she felt a familiar arm grab her. "MINA!" Raye shouted, "What are you doing?"
"Some asshole just mugged a woman! I'm gonna go put a stop to it."
"No you are not!"
"Yeah Mina," Serena said, "You might get hurt!"
"Serena," Mina rolled her eyes, "I'm Sailor Venus, I think I can handle myself."
"We just left home to get away from Sailor business," Lita chimed in.
"Mina," Artemis approached her, "Remember the contract on Sailor Moon. We can't afford to have any of our enemies know we're here."
"The way the media follows us," Luna added, "It wouldn't be hard for them to find you here."
"So," Mina said, "We're just gonna sit around and do nothing?"
"Our mission is to protect the princess at all costs," Luna continued.
Raye consoled her girlfriend as Mina reluctantly buried her head into Raye's chest.
"Don't worry Mina," Amy interjected, "New York has a great police force."
"In Other News, New York City's crime rate has tripled this month due to astronomical budget cuts in police services."
The Sailor Scouts watched the 10:00 news in disgust.
"What was it you were saying about the Police Force Amy?" Lita teased.
"Who would have thought the Governor would spend millions of tax dollars on prostitutes?" Amy said astounded.
Mina sat there with crossed arms. Her eyes were filled with anger.
"Yeah," Serena said, "If I was the governor, I'd use the taxes to buy all kinds of clothes, and food, and jewelry, and food, and shoes, and food, and-"
"Serena," Raye said, "If you don't shut up, I'm gonna kill you myself."
"Hey," Lita said to ease the tension, "Why don't I whip up some drinks and snacks?"
"Oh Lita," Serena jumped up from the couch, "This is New York, let's go out tonight, listen to some music."
"Serena," Amy said, "We can't go out to a bar, we're not 21."
"Well," Serena pulled something out of her pocket, "That's not what these fake IDs say!"
She showed her friends five realistic IDs with different dates of birth for each of them.
"What?" Raye said taking the one with her picture on it, "Where did you get these?"
"Well," Serena said uncomfortably, "Let's just say I had to do some things I'm not... particularly proud of."
The other scouts recoiled in disgust.
"Lita," Amy told her brunette friend, "Remind me to sleep with you tonight."
"Remind me to sleep in a hotel!" Raye snapped.
"All right," Serena sighed, "Let's just get ready to go."
All of them got up except for Mina, who sat there in silence. Serena, Amy and Lita went to get dressed, but Raye sat down next to her girl:
"Mina are you all right?"
Mina shook her head, "How can we just sit around and do nothing while the city is still plagued with scoundrels?"
Raye laughed, "What is with you? You complain about fighting our enemies all the time."
"I just," Mina hesitated. She turned to see her black-haired lover's honest eyes, "Can we really just step away from Sailor business just like that? Don't you miss being a Sailor Scout? Saving the world? Having the media say how important we are? Can we really just go on like the past 6 years never happened?"
Raye put her arm around the blonde. She too lowered her head in regret: "No. I guess not. And I guess I do miss being Sailor Mars. The five of us, or nine of us sometime, going out and protecting the world." She laughed, "Screw the police force, we could start our own protection business."
Mina's eyes lifted, "So why don't we do that? At least you and me? The enemy won't know Serena is here."
"I think you underestimate them. Besides, I think deep down, I'm ready for a normal life. We can start a band, focus on our careers. Make a name for Raye and Mina instead of Sailor Mars and Venus. And..." She stared deep into her eyes, "We can focus more on each other."
Raye's soft words distracted Mina's one-track mind enough for the two of them to lean in and kiss passionately. Their lips felt soft while their tongues danced to the rhythms of the city noises. Raye kissed Mina on the neck as the blonde sighed in greater relief. Yet for all the passion in the room, Mina's super hearing could not be deterred by the sounds of sirens outside the window.
"Let it go," Raye whispered and continued to kiss her lover. Mina returned the affection still distracted.
"Hey love birds," Lita's voice popped in. Raye and Mina broke their embrace to see their friends standing over them ready to go out. "Are we going or what?"
Serena laughed and teased her friend, "Ha ha Raye, you got caught, you got caught."
Raye stood up, "You're a douchebag, you know that Serena?"
Serena grunted, "Yeah, well you're a... a flabbergoozal!"
The other girls gave her an inscrutable look.
"Serena," Amy said, "That's not a real word."
"C'mon guys," Lita didn't feel like having this argument tonight, "Are we going or what?"
"You guys can go," Mina said still sitting on the couch, "I'm just gonna stay here."
The other girls attempted to change her mind unsuccessfully.
"Well," Lita said, "If she doesn't wanna come, she doesn't wanna come."
"I wanna go!" Serena whined.
"All right," Raye snorted, "Keep your pants on... for all our sakes."
Lita laughed. Serena simply picked up her purse with Luna sticking her head out of it. "You ready Luna?"
"I'm only doing this to keep an eye on you Serena," The cat explained.
"You're keeping Luna in your purse?" Amy questioned.
"Hey," Serena said as they made their way out the door, "If Paris Hilton can walk around with her freakin' dog in her purse, I'm pretty sure-" The dialogue disappeared as the door closed.
Mina continued to watch the end of the news.
"Several robberies this past week, the police simply cannot keep up."
Mina had finally had enough. She got up and opened the door to her bedroom. Artemis was asleep on his kitty bed. Mina looked through her drawer to find a pair of long smooth white gloves with golden bands around the cuffs, slightly different from the gloves she wore as Sailor Venus. Cracking a smile, she pulled them on ever so slowly. Looking into the mirror with the white gloves on, this was familiar to her. Rubbing the leather gloves on her face and neck made her feel better. Suddenly, her attention turned to another familiar accessory: A large red mask. She picked up the red mask with her gloved hands and looked into the mirror as sirens wailed outside.
Not too far away, the street was eerily quiet. A Japanese man was ready to close down his delicatessen for the night. An hour earlier, the deli was overrun by famished New Yorkers getting a late night snack.
"Annoying kids think they know more about meat than me," The Deli owner vented with his thick Japanese accent. "'Oh you’re not cutting that right, that bread is stale, go back to China!' Shows how much they know."
The man prepared to close down the register before the bell rang. A dark figure approached, looked like a late-night jogger. It was late, the deli-owner wanted to go home: “Sorry, we’re closing for the night. Go away-”
As he moved his head up from the register, he found himself looking down the barrel of a 9m pistol. He froze. He had never been robbed before. He turned his eyes away from the pistol and looked at the face behind the trigger. The man had no expression. He was either tanned or his face was extremely dirty. The deli-owner could see all the world’s problems in this man’s eyes: greed, racism, desperation, etc. It didn’t take long for the thief to respond.
“Give me the fucking money and put it in a bag!” His voice was shakey, but the deli-owner did not want to chance it. He quickly opened the register stumbling slightly. “Hurry up Jap!” the mugger insisted. Within ten seconds, the Japanese immigrant surrendered a bag of his day’s hard-earned money to the low-life criminal. He snatched the bag with his gun still focused on the deli-owner’s head. “Get down on the fucking ground!”
The man did as he was told. He could hear the robber run out the door and out into the city. Very slowly, he stood up to see the criminal was gone: "Move to America the wife says!" He said in an annoyed voice.
Outside, the thief ran into a dark narrow alleyway. As he opened the brown bag full of huge sums of money, he smiled, figuring his night was over. He was wrong.
While preparing to go out for a jog, he felt a hard kick to his face. It was so dark in the alleyway, he couldn’t see anything. As the thief fell hard onto his back, dropping the bag and yelping slightly, he cocked his gun. He stood up expecting to see the figure that had struck him. Instead, there was only darkness.
"Who's there?" He screamed. No answer.
He searched all around the alleyway; again, only darkness. He quickly grabbed the bag, and walked out into the open street with his gun still out. He looked down towards the Empire State Building. Still, he could not see his assailant. He slowly turned to the opposite side. Down the corner, he could hear the sirens rushing to the deli he had robbed. The thief had to act fast. He shook his head, uncocked his gun and turned back to the north to run off.
Standing in his way under a lamppost was the figure that had kicked him. It was a girl! She looked like something out of comic book. The robber got a full glimpse of her. She was white as a sheet with blue eyes and long blonde hair with bangs and a red bow on top. She wore large red glasses nearly covering up the top of her face like a mask. She appeared to be wearing a school-girl outfit, a sailor outfit: white with a blue collar, white choker, blue skirt, and a red bow with a gold metal center. She kept her arms up in a martial arts pose. She wore elbow-length gloves with gold bands around the top edges. Her long naked legs were accessorized with black heels.
The thief was both shocked and slightly turned on to see this girl standing before him. He attempted to think of something meaningful and intelligent to say in response to this odd turn of events, but he blurted out: “What the Fuck?”
As soon as he finished his thought, the girl jumped in the air towards him and kicked the thief in the head, spinning him around trying to catch his balance.
"Think you can just make off with a man's hard earned pay?" The girl said, "Not while Sailor V is around!"
As he shook off the pain, the theif cocked his gun preparing to fire at what was now to become the late superhero.
Before he could fire, Sailor V quickly pointed her right index finger towards the assailant while bringing her left hand to her right soldier: "Venus Crescent Beam!" She shouted. All the mugger saw was a bright light nearly blind him before he was knocked to the ground.
As the bright beam of light emitted down the street, the deli owner ran towards the phenomenon with two cops. The light died down and the three walked down the street in confusion.
“What was that?” Asked one of the cops.
The deli owner pointed to the ground: “That’s him!” The cops looked down to see a man on the ground nearly burned and smoking. One of the cops picked up a gun four feet away from him, “That’s the man,” the deli-owner said in his thick Japanese accent, “Who robbed my store.”
The other cop picked the mugger up as he moaned in pain, “Who’s responsible for this?”
The deli owner saw a bag falling down towards him. He caught it only to discover it was filled with the money that was stolen. The cops looked at the bag and then all three looked up at the top of the building to see the suited soldier waving at them.
"Tell all those low-life criminals," she said, "Sailor V has come to New York!"
“Sailor V?” The deli owner smiled.
Sailor V saluted the three men. The deli owner and cops hesitated in saluting back, and the girl jumped into the night with a bright full moon in back of her.