Strangely Familiar Part 1
Lunaryon
Dual Aurora Wave
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Strangely Familiar
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Thursday, June 25
Lunchtime
Lunch isn't so bad. The courtyard is nice. Even though it's a day when most of the school is eating in the classrooms, there are still a few pairs and trios of close friends sitting elsewhere in the courtyard with their bento boxes. But not many, and they're paying Rei almost no attention. So she doesn't have to deal with many looks here, and none at all from close range, which makes it easier to ignore the ones she does get. And, well, her bought-and-paid-for bento is pretty good- probably better than she could have managed herself.
But Rei Hino didn't buy the bento for the flavor. She bought it for the peace and quiet.
If a student has- or buys- their own bento box, the T-A Academy allows them a bit of flexibility about where to eat it. Rei Hino's hasn't had much fun eating lunch in the classroom in a long time, and she certainly wouldn't today. She's never been especially popular, and she's had a lot on her mind. And almost none of her burdens have anything to do with school, which seems like such an unwelcome and pointless distraction these days.
Being entirely honest with herself, she doesn't really care what happens here at the T-A Academy for Girls. The only reason that she's here in particular and not some other school is because of her father. The same father that pretends she doesn't exist. And she's a stranger here, an outcast, a ghost drifting between classes.
On Monday, Rei handed in a test before the end of class, then left the room to go fight at Usagi's side. She missed the rest of the period. No one's said anything to her yet, even though she got the test back marked with a failing grade. Because who cares if a ghost fails a test? Why would the ghost herself care? And even putting that bitter-hearted thought aside, there's the other end of the scale. Who cares if Sailor Mars fails a test? There are much more important things to worry about.
She looks around the courtyard again. There are a few loners who are probably in something like the same position she is. But the rest… have friends. Rei doesn't have that here. There are only a handful of other students who interact with Rei willingly outside of class. Most of the students, and even some of the staff, avoid her. She's never made a secret of how seriously she takes being a miko, and that and a few… things... over the years have gotten her a reputation. One of the weird girls.
And so only a few of the students, and a slim majority of the staff, ever really talk to her anymore. And quite a few of the staff who do talk to her seem to be doing it mostly just because they want to convert her. Like she'd be worth double points or something. Not because she's worth getting to know.
For a long time, Rei was… fine... with that. She'd gotten used to it. Of being the girl people talked to only when they wanted something from her, one way or another.
But having friends outside school makes that harder. Rei can't help but wish she was out there, out of this private school with its good reputation, and in public school with Usagi and her other friends.
Even that thought is just a little bit rueful, after yesterday evening. She remembers quietly agreeing with Ami that Rei would get her turn to talk to Usagi first. And that after that, Ami could still try and go with her to Mercury, like they'd originally planned to do today before things went wrong.
But then they were gone for long enough that Rei would have started to worry if not for Artemis telling her that Ami's communicator was still pinging 'safe' at more or less regular intervals. And the way they looked at each other after they teleported back… Well.
Rei can't imagine Ami turning against her or wanting to hurt her. But for all of that, Rei would be, so help her, jealous-
-If not for the way Usagi bounced up to her, and reached up to put her hands on Rei's shoulders, and smiled, and said "it was amazing, Rei, and no holding out on me, you are so taking me to Mars first chance you get!"
Many children, at one time or another, dream of being astronauts. But despite the roots of her Senshi magic, Rei has never really felt a burning desire to travel to other planets. Until now.
That entire series of thoughts and feelings would never have happened to Rei when she was alone. Not just because it would have been impossible, but because Rei had never imagined having anyone she'd want to do the impossible for. But becoming a Senshi has meant, for her, not being alone anymore.
And, ironically, for once, the instincts she's developing as a Senshi are causing her to care more about something that happens at school.
Three days ago, Sister Rose, one of the newer teachers, came over to have a very strange conversation with Rei. She offered Rei a listening ear and privacy, and said a number of odd things.
"...If you ever want to learn more about good causes, about unity with those whose inner strength brings happiness to others in service to the world, then let me know. I think you could do a great deal of good for the world…"
"...There are ways to reach out and touch the divine, the good, that are… apart from the Church, though not against it. Nor against what you believe. I could explain to you better if we met in my office some time. But perhaps later, if you need some time…"
Rei's instincts tell her that Sister Rose means well. But they tell her that so strongly that she can't help but think of all the strange, powerful feelings she's seen people have in the grip of magic. Something about her is off, somehow, even if not in any unclean or sinister sense.
And, well. The words themselves. Rei feels the corner of her mouth twist into a tight, amused half-smile. Good causes. Inner strength, happiness in service to the world. Reaching out and touching the divine.
She thinks back to a weekend on the lunar surface.
To, just Monday, hearing a huge green oni in a huge gray suit call her 'Lady Mars' as though she was some kind of minor fire-goddess herself.
To bright blue eyes, and a warm loving courage the Rei of three months ago could never have imagined gracing a human heart, and a touch that raised the dead for her.
The urge to laugh, maybe a little crazily, bubbles up within Rei.
Oh, teacher, teacher, if you only knew…
She finishes a few last bites. There's time to go ask Sister Rose what she was talking about. If only to tie up the loose end. Or maybe, maybe… Rei shudders away from the idea at first.
Maybe Sister Rose is a clue to something. Something Rei doesn't have any understanding of yet. But… what if something at the T-A Academy goes truly bad? Anything like that, anything even a fraction as bad as the monstrous deeds of Ahma, that horrible girl who goes to school with Usagi. The thought makes Rei feel sick. She'd never be able to forgive herself if she passes up a chance to learn about something like that before it happened.
Rei gets up, and heads towards the rows of little rooms where teachers have their offices here, to find what this is all about.
After School
The school office secretary having turned out to be a petty, hostile woman just doesn't worry Rei the way it would have before. Not after battles with monsters of half a dozen different descriptions, after sparring across a table with the cold, arrogant mind of a sneering detective, after blood splashing across her in the mist in the little hell that Drella made.
And who knows? Rei decides to count her blessings. Having been deliberately ignored for just long enough to waste the balance of lunch period may be for the best. Waiting to meet Sister Rose until after school means that, whatever happens, there will be time to follow up.
Sure, she'd had a vague notion of rushing over to Crystal Millennium to find out what's happened, or going to happen, with Ahma Anteratu, but whatever it is, she knows somehow that Usagi will make sure things come out for the best.
Though Rei wonders, idly, how much power she'd have needed to call down upon herself to get the secretary's attention properly. To-
She fights down the mocking, distracting thought. She's nearly to the teacher's office. And either Sister Rose is a clue to some actual problem or danger and demands Rei's full attention, or she's a decent person who deserves Rei's full attention. Or maybe, the stirring flutters at the edge of her awareness whisper, somehow both.
Rei's knuckles rap on the door. For several seconds, there's no answer. She sighs and knocks again. And this time, she can hear a soft sound from inside the office- a strange rippling sound almost like flowing water. She might not have caught it before becoming a Senshi. Like all her friends, Rei's become a bit sharper, a bit stronger, than any ordinary human even without the transformation.
"One moment!"
Sister Rose's voice is muffled by the door, and a few more words after that are so muffled that even the enhanced hearing of a Sailor Senshi can't pick them out from the background. At last, Sister Rose opens the door, looking- well, only slightly disheveled, in that she's having to adjust her habit a bit. The teacher blinks with surprise at the light in the corridor. The blinds of her office are drawn and the lights are off. But though suspicion comes easily enough to Rei, she has no real time to think that over, because Sister Rose breaks into a bright smile at the sight of her.
"Ah! Rei! Perfect. Come in, come in!"
Rei nods, moving slowly. "You wanted to speak with me?"
"Of course!"
Sister Rose swings the door all the way open and steps out of the way. At first glance, her office seems entirely ordinary. Nothing's obviously wrong. The only thing even slightly out of place is the oddly positioned mirror, a little less than half a meter square, that hangs from a patch of bare wall where Rei suspects a picture used to be.That's not wrong, not ominous at all so far as Rei can see. But somehow it trips that same instinct that tells her something's funny.
Still smiling brightly, Rose picks up where her first two words left off. "Yes, yes I'd be glad to. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me! Though… will you forgive me if I ask a few questions? I realize that I don't know you nearly as well as you deserve…"
Rei shrugs. And she's answered a lot of teachers' questions at one time or another, so where's the harm? She can always refuse to answer, she supposes.
Most people, trying to do what Sister Rose does in the next few minutes, would come across as rude, as antagonistic. As the kind of person Rei hates, people who covet information over others as a way of becoming more powerful. But the teacher has a genuine charm and seems honestly interested as she asks Rei about her life. About how she's doing. About her grades- Rei shades the truth a little, sure that she could turn things around if she really needed to. About what she does on the weekends. What she does at the shrine.
Despite how seemingly good-natured the questions are, Rei can't help but find it a little nerve-wracking. Seemingly good and normal people have turned out to be enemies before, or been manipulated into being enemies. Rei saw some of that during the battles against Jadeite, and after, with Poisony's manipulations. Usagi and Ami and Makoto have told her of other things. And Minako has enough war stories, after fighting the Dark Kingdom for a year and a half now, that it's given Rei a couple of sympathetic nightmares on her behalf.
Even if Rose seems nice… she could still turn out to be an enemy. And yet, the more that she talks with the Sister, the less certain she is that there is any such threat, any such problem. Rei can't always be sure that she's sensing the truth behind what others say and do, but she… knows things, sometimes. And what little she feels like she knows from watching Sister Rose just doesn't say 'danger.' Almost the opposite, really, a thing incapable of being truly dangerous in itself.
So Rei answers Sister Rose's questions, wondering what this is really about, trying to find a sense of it. And at last, the teacher leans back in her chair and nods to herself. She speaks so suddenly, looking at Rei so intently, that Rei can't help but blink in surprise.
"Okay! I guess that just leaves what I said to you at lunch…" Sister Rose gives Rei a self-deprecating smile.
And quite suddenly, Rei's worries are dragged back to the front. "...There… is that, yes."
Sister Rose looks strangely nervous, suddenly. Her eyes are wide and a bit watery. "...Yes. Now, before I can really talk about that, I need to know that I can trust you. That you won't tell anyone else about what you're about to see… okay?"
Rei thinks that one over. Once again, Rose seems very genuine, very well-intentioned, more than a little worried… and very off, somehow. At last, she answers. "I promise that I won't tell anyone here at the school. Not… not unless what you show me puts the other students, or the staff, at risk."
Rose smiles in relief. "Thank you. And I promise, this won't be something that could hurt any of them. I wouldn't want to do a thing like that. We made sure to check beforehand. So, you won't tell anyone? I… well, you'll see why in a moment, but I'd be at kind of a disadvantage, maybe even danger, if word of this got out about me."
We?
Before Rei has a chance to ask what she means by that, though, Sister Rose bounces to her feet, spreads her arms wide, and spins around in a circle with a smile on her face. And quite suddenly, she explodes into a cloud of white smoke that briefly fills the room before fading away- not into the vents, just away.
And now, floating there in front of Rei, is a tiny little creature, almost like an impossibly small panda cub. If a panda cub were wearing a leopard-print dress. Or had a flower tucked by one ear. Or wore a gigantic backpack. But even with the pack, the little levitating fuzzball is about the size of Rei's head.
Surprisingly, the little creature still has Sister Rose's voice, despite being about one tenth the woman's size. "Rei Hino! You are kind of heart and resolute of soul, dutiful and kind, with a great capacity for friendship. I ask you, won't you become a Pretty Cure, a guardian of the Earth?"
…Huh.
This… this is going to be a tricky conversation, isn't it?
Hikawa Shrine
An hour later
Rei takes a long moment to lean back and stare out through her bedroom window at the cloudless sky overhead. Swarms of thoughts chase each other through her head at the moment. She forces herself to shake her worries away- at least for a moment- and look down at Luna, who's rolled onto one side and sprawled across the blotter pad on her desk.
"Thank you for making time to talk with me, Luna. And-" Rei feels a smile slip through to her face. "Go ahead, roll on my desk. I don't mind."
"I- oh." Luna freezes in place, suddenly embarrassed. "Well, at least unlike the local imitations, I know a cantrip for tidying up stray hairs."
"I'm sure you do."
"I just… felt comfortable here, Rei." Luna sounds slightly embarrassed.
Rei's smile turns a bit softer, a bit more serene, and she finds a brief, surprisingly happy hum escaping her. "That's fine. I'm just glad you're happy."
Luna wriggles. "Finding out that a hundred or so of my species rode out the end of civilization the same way I did has been… a relief, I'll call it. It feels… real. Knowing that Yuuno's clan may be my very distant cousins a thousand times removed. I suppose that's irrational, but I find that I don't much care."
"Like I said, I'm just glad you're happy." And Rei finds that she is.
Phobos chuckles from the windowsill to Rei's right, shaking her head. "Luna? You? Not caring about that? Wonderful! Being reasonable is overrated."
That's going to draw a response, so Rei turns, anticipating- yes. Deimos is making a great show of turning his whole head so that his eye-roll will stand out. Amused by the jest- but, as usual, playing the part of the serious one. "Phobos, be nice. Luna has a perfectly good reason to be feeling…"
"Over the moon?" Phobos interrupts. "I suppose it would be something like getting a message from Korronis, after all these years."
Rei blinks, glancing over at the two. "Korronis?" The name is familiar, but she can't put a finger on exactly why.
Deimos nods. "Our home realm. It used to be one of several connected to the Earth through a great tree. But…"
Phobos continues, and her voice has dipped into a tone of sad acceptance. "Ever since we woke up again, we've been unable to work the magic that connects to Yggdrasil. We aren't sure if the Worlds' Tree is gone, or if the Earth's been disconnected from it, or if something else has happened."
World Tree? Yggdrasil?
Rei's heard that word before. Something from school, no, that's not it, somewhere important- oh. Kintoleski mentioned a World Tree, and called it Yggdrasil.
Grumbling, Rei shakes her head. "You two should definitely have mentioned that to me earlier. Two of the Pretty Cures, down in Kamakura, are fighting a group called Dark Fall. I know I mentioned them, but not the detail… which is that Usagi and the others tell me they're guardians of an enormous tree, and that one of Dark Fall's warriors mentioned the tree being named 'Yggdrasil.'
Phobos and Deimos are very, very still. They're expressive when they want to be, when you know how to read their body language, but when they choose not to move, there's not much to see there. But then, if Rei only ever found herself knowing things she could explain how she knew, she'd have lived a fairly different life. And she knows the crows very, very well. They're… hers, somehow, in a way not even Grandpa is.
Deimos radiates something close to remorse, and even Phobos' hope is tinged with sorrow. They- have they been so busy protecting Hikawa Shrine for all these hundreds of years, waiting for her to awaken, that they've missed out on a chance to return home? Kamakura's less than a hundred kilometers away. Quite a lot less. Not far at all, as the crow flies. And- and Rei refuses to imagine that her past self would have begrudged these two the right to visit this 'Korronis' during all the years that they waited, faithfully, for Rei to be born.
But the past can't be undone.
"Deimos, Phobos? I'm sorry that you've gone without seeing Korronis for so long. If I can take you there, I will. As soon as I can." Rei smiles, first at one of the crows, then at the other.
Deimos sighs. "In hindsight, we… could have made better choices But Lady Tyr's instructions to us before she catapulted us forward through the Dimensional Sea into the Sengoku Period were very cryptic."
Phobos tucks her beak down. "And the two of us were in positively terrible shape at the time, so we weren't sure we remembered them right. Especially since we remembered them differently."
"We weren't sure when you'd be born, or what to do until you were, and then when you were little your grandfather wanted to wait to tell you things until you were older, and-"
Rei shrugs, deciding to specifically not ask what her past self said to Phobos and Deimos. It sounds like a good way to end up as angry at her past self as Ami is all the time. The crows, as always alert to her frame of mind, fall silent and cock their heads attentively for a moment, before Rei thinks of what to say. And even then, only the first few words come to mind.
"The past is past…"
But as she trails off, Phobos perks up. "But hey, the future hasn't been written yet. Don't worry about us."
Something passes between the crows, then. Something Rei can't quite identify, can't read as easily as she did the sorrowful feelings of a moment ago. And then Deimos straightens, and Rei absolutely can read the swagger in his voice. "Well, you don't need to worry about me, at least. Now, Phobos dear, even from here I can hear your brains rattling around in your head every time you move…"
Phobos gasps, and the theatrical gasp is almost good enough to fool Rei. "An idiot! At least I have the sense to take care of myself! Look at you! Your feathers are crooked, you're covered in dust, your claws are chipped, the state you're in-"
Rei looks, helplessly, confused, at Luna. They've bickered and bantered before, but this is… different, somehow. Luna seems even more confused than Rei is.
Deimos cackles. "That's not ugliness, that's rugged charm! All the more of an idiot, if you can't recognize how charming these scars make me!"
Phobos sounds honestly outraged, now-
"Now that! That is a challenge too far! I am not just any idiot, and I am not a blind idiot!" She launches herself off her windowsill, aiming straight across the room at Deimos. "YOUR idiot! FOREVER!"
Phobos blurs as she crosses the room, and the darkness of her feathers turns into a smear in the air as she collides with Deimos. The two roll, and the blur expands, covering both of them, and fades…
And then the little fairy in purple speaks with Deimos' deeper, rougher voice. "And I'm yours forever, too. No matter what trials we go through. Or what chances we may have missed."
The fairy in red, as Rei found herself expecting, even if she's never seen them like this before- in more ways than one- still has Phobos' light, airy voice. "Well sure, but where'd all that rugged charm you were talking about go?"
"Why you-"
Rei feels like she's interrupting rudely, but there's something important she… thinks she's just realized. "Um."
The two little fairies- separate and turn to her, and she realizes that they're waiting for her to figure out what comes after that 'um.' Which, well.
"Um. Deimos… are you a girl?"
Phobos laughs, and Deimos does a silly little bow. "Yep!"
Rei stops for a moment, and tries to think about it very, very honestly. "I guess I just always thought, because of your voice…"
Phobos suddenly starts laughing even harder, falling to her knees, and Deimos waits for her to recover before leaning down to put a hand on her shoulder. "Do you want to make the point, or should I?"
And Phobos straightens. "Sure, sure, I'm fine. It's just the way Deimos is. That's nothing compared to- do you have any idea how squeaky we'd both sound to you if our voices worked exactly like yours? You humans are ten times our size. Luna, back me up here, you must know how it is."
Rei looks to Luna, who tilts her head briefly to one side, then the other. "She does have a point about that, yes."
Phobos waves her arms widely. "So yeah, sure, Deimos' voice is deeper than mine, but mine is so much deeper than it would be if- hm, can I hit those notes…" She suddenly stops and speaks in the tiniest little squiggle of a voice, something Rei's honestly not sure she'd be able to pick out from the wind in the trees if not for Senshi hearing- "my voice would probably sound like this, if the two of us played by human rules. Compared to that, the difference between me and the missus isn't much."
Rei nods, taking that in. "The… missus?"
Phobos reaches over, putting a finger lightly on Deimos' tiny ear. The two of them turn their heads, almost in unison. The tiny, tiny, almost microscopic matched pairs of earrings the two of them wear suddenly flash like little stars. "Mhm! We should probably sit down and work out what anniversary we're on one of these days…"
"You're married?" On Rei's lifetime list of bizarre realizations, that's lower than it would have been a week ago, but it still ranks somewhere above "your childhood imaginary friends are actually real and are centuries-old crow-spirits who can turn into little fairies, or possibly the other way around."
Deimos stares flatly at Rei. "...Did you not notice all the neck-preening and beak-tapping we've been doing since you were a baby?"
"..." Rei grits her teeth. That just feels unfair. "Look, I'm a fire-omen-reader, not a bird-omen-reader, okay?"
"Well, I suppose I'm being a little unfair."
Luna makes a polite little cough to draw everyone's attention. "I had no idea what human affection gestures looked like when I first left the colony I was born on. Admittedly, Artemis never seemed to have an issue with it, despite not being native to the solar system."
Rei glances down. "I probably deserve it, Deimos. I've been thinking of you as a boy for, well, all my life really."
Deimos- she- shrugs. "Well, no harm done. You never treated me like the icky crow because of it or anything."
Rei shrugs. "Well, I just thought of you as being different somehow."
Phobos does a little jump and waves her arms in the air, only to wrap them around Deimos. "Different, all right!" She laughs.
Rei… kind of pauses there, glancing away. As she puts aside the awkwardness of the moment, admittedly with a bit of difficulty, she finds that for all that she's never seen them turn human and didn't know they were… involved, and so on… Phobos and Deimos are still the same companions they have always been. The same guardians, trying to keep her at least halfway safe from the troubles of her life, or to help her bear the ones they can't protect her from.
They are the same that they've always been, for her, and just as always, she could happily listen to them banter for an hour or more.
Rei could listen to her guardians banter for an hour or more, easily. Especially now that they're starting to hint at secrets she hadn't even imagined the outlines of a year ago, even among all the 'impossible' things that seemed plausible to a girl with two talking birds for friends. But there's something else, she finds herself remembering with a twist of horror and a defiant pulse of hope, that she really needs to talk about with Luna. Well, two things, but one she needs to ask right now, because she's got to know.
"How did the thing with the Ahma-" monster, demon "-girl go?"
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