Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ What It Takes ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Luna was walking briskly to the next light with heightened worry in the back of her mind. She could have sworn that the man in the black suit was following her but as she thought about it she shook it from her mind mentally hitting herself on the head for her paranoia. She was watching too many spy movies with Usagi that's all. With that resolve, she finally slowed down. She turned to look and the man was not there and she sighed. She would most definitely have to keep her mind straight and not tainted too much by those movies with secret agents and what not. With a smile she then trotted lightly on her usual path back to Usagi's house. The princess would be home soon and Luna would have to be there to make sure she was staying on top of that school work.

 

She turned the corner and suddenly felt the hair on her back stand again. The street was filled with innocent pedestrians but she suddenly got that feeling again, the feeling that she had been getting for the last week but this time it was more prominent. Her stomach churned as the image of the man in the black suit came back to mind.

 

`No Luna,' she thought to herself. `You're just overreacting.'

 

She forced herself to continue walking despite the feeling that could not be pushed aside. Her timid steps soon increased in speed as they were before and she suddenly found herself sprinting to Usagi's house. `Almost there,' she thought in relief. She then turned the last corner and froze.

 

“Here kitty,” said a man on his knee with a finger beckoning her to come closer. Luna's eyes widened as she looked him over with his black suit and sun glasses. `You must be joking,' she cried in the depths of her find. Slowly she inched away from him and turned to run but was caught by another man in a suit that she hadn't seen before.

 

“There, there kitty,” he said while trying to tame the squirming black cat in his hands. The other one came towards them and placed a collar on Luna while his partner held her down. Luna then bit the man that was holding her and leapt out of his grasps. She could feel her legs ready to sprint but suddenly dropped violently to the ground suddenly twitching at the sudden surge of electricity through her small cat body.

 

“D@*n cat,” cursed the man that she had bit.

 

“Don't worry she won't be doing that anymore especially with that collar now won't you?” said the other as he went to pick her up. She didn't even bother trying to jump from his hands in fear that she'd be shocked again. She was weak from just that one shock and was not willing to test if she could take another one.

 

“What do they want with a dumb cat anyways?” asked one of them as he wrapped his hand with a bandage.

 

“We're gonna have to find out.”

 

Usagi sat with her chin propped on her hands. Her cerulean blue eyes were crossed and focused on the pencil that she had been trying to balance on the tip of her nose. It fell to the table and she promptly looked at it and grabbed it to put it back on her nose. Over and over again she repeated that same process in pure boredom. Finally, she gave up the useless task and fell onto her back with her hands laid above her head. `Where's Luna?' she thought. She glanced sideways out of the window and frowned. It was dark and there was no Luna in sight. A tinge of worry tugged at the bottom of her heart and she sighed. Luna was fine, she always was. She'd probably just show up later like she always did. With a shrug she then got up and went downstairs to eat dinner.

 

She yawned and glanced at her watch then looked back at her watch. 6 PM ALREADY!!! She rushed up to her room and shoved all of her books into her bag and almost fell down the stairs with the sudden weight that she had to take down with her.

 

“Usa,” said her mother. “Aren't you going to eat?”

 

Usagi froze at the door and let the strong aroma fill her nostrils. She dropped her bag in defeat with her head hung low. Just a small bite wouldn't hurt. She rushed to the kitchen nearly tackling her younger brother and shoveled the food into her mouth.

 

“Wow mom this is really great,” she said with a mouth full of food.

 

“You like it?” she responded. “Would you like desert too?”

 

Usagi groaned knowing that her mother had made her favorite but looked to her watch. She was supposed to be at the temple for the scout meeting but her mom had made her favorite! This only happened like once a month. She sighed and forced herself to do something that she knew she'd regret.

 

“Sorry mom, maybe another time,” she forced herself to forget her stomach for once and sprinted out of the door. She skillfully dodged crowds of people she passed and patted herself on the back. Man, I'm getting pretty good at this, she thought to herself suddenly slamming into someone hard and falling backwards.

 

The man growled as he glared at her. She hadn't noticed one bit only paying attention to the pain that suddenly came over her rear. Why me? She asked herself mentally.

 

“Are you gonna apologize or do I have to make an example of you?” snarled the man and the others around him snickered.

 

“Sorry, sir, I wasn't watching where I was going,” she replied quickly picking herself up from the ground.

 

“Got that right,” he retorted. Usagi laughed nervously and tried to walk off but one of the others stepped in front of her.

 

“Hey, not so fast babe,” he said with a smile. “No one just runs into us and gets away with only a measly apology. There are prices for that.”

 

“Prices?” asked Usagi already not liking where this situation was headed.

 

“Yeah, prices.”

 

“Like what? Money? I've already spent all of my allowance so I've got nothing left to give.”

 

“Well, we do accept other forms of payment,” he said nonchalantly with a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. Now she knew what he was heading towards and she didn't like it at all.

 

“No,” she said as she tried to go past them again and was grabbed by him. He gripped her arm tightly and she paled in color looking around for someone to help but found the streets to be empty.

 

“No!” she screamed trying to kick him but he grabbed her tightly from behind holding her in place.

 

“She's a feisty one,” yelled one of them and she suddenly grew disgusted as she watched them slowly close in on her.

 

“Get off me!” she yelled but they all laughed.

 

“Hey!” came a familiar voice making Usagi relieved. Thank goodness!

 

“Huh?” before any of the men could react they found themselves thrown roughly against the wall. The one who was holding Usagi suddenly let her go and charged at the newcomer with a knife at hand but they skillfully knocked it from his grip doing a sweep kick and swiftly kneeing him hard in the gut.

 

“This girl's crazy!” yelled one of them and he ran off along with the others who had managed to keep consciousness.

 

“Next time I'll be sure to put you in a coma you sleazy no good wimps!” she yelled.

 

She walked over to Usagi and helped her up.

 

“You alright?” she asked.

 

“Yeah, thanks to you,” replied Usagi. “You're gonna have to teach me out to fight like that Mako-chan.”

 

“Usa, we already tried, remember?” replied Makoto with a laugh. “You ended up drop kicking Artemis and managed to break everything around you in the process. Not to mention you got upset with me and kept yelling at me saying that I was being too mean and that I hung around Rei too much.”

 

“I wasn't mad,” replied Usagi.

 

“Well if you weren't mad then you sure made it seem like you were when you didn't talk to me for a week and refused to eat anything that I cooked. I even made you your favorite and you wouldn't even touch it!”

 

“Oh,” said Usagi. “I guess I was a little upset, but that was only because you made me work so hard! I would've been fine if you were nicer.”

 

“Usagi, we were just stretching and you were already complaining!”

 

“Okay, okay,” said Usagi. “Let's just forget about that and move on.”

 

“As you wish.”

 

“Say, why are you late?” asked Usagi as she realized why she was out there walking in the first place.

 

“Oh,” said Makoto. “I had an unexpected visitor and I had to talk to him.”

 

“Him?” said Usagi he interest suddenly rising.

 

Makoto hit herself mentally for the slip-up and searched her mind for a good lie.

 

“Yeah,” she said as if it was nothing. “Him.”

 

“Who him?” asked Usagi.

 

“Well, him,” she said in response.

 

“Mako, com'on! Tell me! Who was the guy?”

 

“Just an old friend Usagi, really, it was nothing serious.” Usagi frowned in dismay at this and reluctantly let the subject drop.

 

“Are you ready for an earful from Rei?” asked Usagi as the temple came into view.

 

“Nope,” replied Makoto. “But at least we'll go through it together.”

 

They opened the door slowly and stepped in cautiously bracing themselves for the ear piercing scolding that Rei always had to give to anyone who was late especially if it was Usagi. To their surprise, there was only silence.

 

“What, is Rei not here?” asked Usagi as she opened her eyes. The others were just bunched around Ami's computer watching something. “What? What are you guys watching?”

 

“Shh, quiet meatball head, don't you have any common sense?” retorted Rei coldly. Usagi growled and was about to reply with a good come back when she suddenly caught view of what they were watching.

 

“Here Kitty,” came the voice of a man. He was in a black suit beckoning for a small black cat to come to him.

 

“Luna?” said Usagi softly.

 

They all watched silently as the man grabbed Luna and flinched as they watched them throw her roughly into the back of a limo. Artemis paced uneasily looking to the screen and away in disgust. As the screen flickered off, they sat there without a word.

 

“What could they possibly want with Luna?”

 

“They must have found out that she was somehow able to talk or maybe they noticed that she was some way connected to the sailor scouts.” Said Artemis.

 

“How could they have found that out?” asked Usagi. “She's usually good at making sure no one is around when she does talk.”

 

“Could they be from the negaverse?” asked Minako.

 

“I doubt it,” said Ami. “It seemed that this was more on the grounds of regular humans.”

 

“You mean special trained humans.” Said Rei.

 

“Special trained humans?” said Minako ridiculously. “It took two of them to retrieve a cat! What's so special about that?”

 

“It was done in public view, Minako. They couldn't just go out and take her out with a sterilizing gun.” Said Rei. They all went quiet again.

 

“How did you guys get this?” asked Makoto finally speaking for the first time.

 

“I was able to hack into the city's surveillance cameras.” She replied.

 

“You know how to do that?!?” cried Minako and Usagi in unison completely forgetting about the real issue at hand.

 

“More importantly,” interrupted Makoto. “How did you know to do that?”

 

“Oh yeah,” said Minako and Usagi sweat dropping. “How did you know?”

 

“The fire told me,” said Rei. “So as soon as I got the premonition, I called Ami.”

 

Ami nodded in agreement. “I didn't like the idea but it had to be done.”

 

They all sat in a circle silently contemplating their next move. What could they do? They never had to do work involving kidnapping by normal humans! Think, think, THINK! Still, nothing.

 

“Why didn't we ever make communicators for Luna and Artemis?” inquired Minako. They all shrugged in defeat.

 

“There's no use thinking about what we could've done to avoid this,” spoke Artemis heatedly. “She's been kidnapped and we need to do something about it!” The girls flinched at his aggressiveness but understood that he must have been suffering even more than they were.

 

“But what can we do?” Spoke Rei, much to the surprise of everyone. She was never one to openly give up. “We're school girls and suddenly we're supposed to become secret undercover agents? These guys have most likely spent half their lives training to be where they are and we're supposed to be that in the time span of a day? It's more than likely that they have real guns with real bullets and aren't too shabby on their aim either. Have any of us even held a real gun? Nonetheless shot one?”

 

The room tensed. Each girl stared painfully at the ground. They knew Rei was right. This kidnapping was not in their field. If they took it to the cops then most likely they'd be coaxed into buying a newer younger cat that would never be like the black cat they were advised by. Makoto gripped her pants in frustration. Even she was giving up hope.

 

“If we were to go after Luna,” said Rei. “The only one who would even stand a slight chance would be Ami because she knows how to do more technological things than any of us. But regardless of how much we try, they'd have guns and that would be the end of it. Even an idiot can kill the smartest and strongest person if they have a gun with a single bullet.”

 

Artemis' eyes widened as he realized the girls' desire to find her diminished with every fact that Rei stated. Yes, he wanted to push them not to give up; but the reality of it was simple. They wouldn't survive and they wouldn't stand a chance against those guys. He loved Luna surely but he was also a guide to the scouts and leading them to their deaths was not part of the deal…but of course, hadn't he always been leading them to death ever since he met them? He shook the idea from his head.

 

“Then,” said Minako. “What does this mean? Are we…are we giving up?”

 

Silence fell over the group again. No one wanted to answer but they each knew what would come out. Rei frowned as she stared at Artemis who looked dazed. She could see that he was already preparing himself to let go if he had to. Whatever sacrifice it took he would take whether he wanted to or not. That was the true meaning of duty and they each understood that. Rei suddenly caught glimpse of a pool of tears at Usagi's knees. She watched a lone tear fall timelessly splashing onto the floor and watched as Usa's body shook dangerously as the silent tears trickled from her shadowed eyes.

 

“Usa,” whispered Minako. She shook her head.

 

Usagi's voice was raspy with pain and shaken with every sob. “I'd rather burn in hell then to have my best friend be taken by some damned men dressed in suits and sunglasses. I will save my friend even if I have to blow down their walls with all my power. I'd never let you guys so easily, so why would you let Luna go that way?” She lifted her head to stare into the eyes of all her scouts. “I guess I never realized that we were nothing but a group of cowards.” Everyone straightened at this ready to reproach her but was caught when they realized the truth in this.

 

“Usagi-hime,” said Artemis with a smile. She looked to him and wiped her eyes.

 

The room was silent once more as Usagi sat upright looking at the ground, as were the others.

 

“Heehehee,” broke out Minako, finally she couldn't hold it in and started rolling on the ground with laughter.

 

“Minako,” said Ami with a look of disdain. The others could only arc their eyebrows in question. Sometimes Minako had those “Looney” moments and this most certainly was one of them.

 

“I-I'm sorry,” she managed to spit out between laughs. “I-I just can't-…I just can't take Usa acting so seriously!” She let out in another fit of laughter. “Maybe it would be better i-if you just kept crying!” she splurged as she rolled onto Rei's lap. Rei harshly shoved her off and folded her arms across her chest.

 

“I swear you're such a kid!” she yelled.

 

Usagi had just stared and cracked before she too broke into a light laughing fit. That was pretty out of the ordinary and looking back she could see why Minako would laugh. Artemis shook his head as he watched from the side. Minako and Usagi were rolling with laughter, Makoto had not yet known how to handle this, Ami smiled as she watched and Rei kept yelling obscenities to both blondes.

 

“Guys, guys,” said Makoto as she shook her head with a scoff. “Com'on lets figure out what we're gonna do now that we know we're not giving up.” Minako and Usagi stopped letting out small giggles and Rei smoothed out her robes.

 

“Well,” said Ami. “We need to look at this from a logical viewpoint. Luna has been kidnapped by men that we can't even get a clear profile of in this video. The likelihood that we'd be able to find help in getting someone to search for her is low and who is to say that they don't know that she has a connection to the scouts? If we go after her then they'd know that we either are the sailor scouts or that we are an even closer link to the scouts.”

“What if we're just giving them too much credit?” asked Minako. “I mean really, Luna never slips up and she's never seen at the fight scenes so how can they know she is related to the scouts? Maybe they just wanted her as a pet and knew Usa wouldn't give her up,”

 

“That's ridiculous!” retorted Rei. “Why would they take Luna?”

 

“Hey!” yelled Usagi. “Luna's a great pet, who wouldn't want to take her?”

 

“That's besides the point,” said Rei obviously annoyed. “There are shelters all over the world filled with kittens and cats that they could've chosen over Luna so I doubt that they took her for the simple reason that they wanted her as a pet! They had to have known that she was special in some way.”

 

“I guess that's reasonable,” said Minako with a sigh and Rei scowled at her nonchalant behavior.

 

“Why you-”

 

“Well then,” interrupted Makoto. “Now that we've figured that much out, what should we do?”

 

“Well,” said Ami. “As much as we might like to, we cannot use our powers in this situation. If we do then the government might start paying more attention to the sightings and pinpoint our main activity here. A good number of people do not believe in our existence and that's good but if we are too reckless then we'll not only be searching for others but others will be searching for us too. It would be more difficult for us to stay inconspicuous with people on our tails.”

 

Usagi groaned at this. “Not even a small use would be okay?” She asked.

 

Ami shook her head. “For us we need to transform to use our powers which is too problematic. We'll just have to forget our powers all together.”

 

“Gosh,” groaned Minako. “I'm getting to feel like we have no chance again.”

 

“That's for sure,” mumbled Makoto and Rei nodded in agreement.

 

“Well, let's just figure out what needs to be done instead of what may happen,” said Ami.

 

“We'll need to train,” said Rei.

 

“Train?” Said Usagi. “How?”

 

“Hand-to-hand combat and gunmanship,” said Rei with a frown.

 

“Well Mako-chan can do hand-to-hand-”

 

“I don't know,” interrupted Makoto. “What if it doesn't match up to-”

 

“Mako-chan,” Artemis cut in, “Don't question your strength. Remember, you battled youma without your powers and they weren't exactly keen with the idea that you had more to give them.”

 

Mako blushed at this. “Sorry, I didn't think of that.”

 

“It's okay, Mako-chan,” Artemis coaxed. “We're just scared, that's all. We've never faced a situation like this.” With a nod Makoto considered this and smiled.

 

“Then that leaves gunmanship.” Immediately all eyes fell on the raven-haired beauty.

 

“What?” she spat out bitterly.

 

“Well, you're the closest we can get to gunmanship,” said Minako. “So you're going to have to train us.”

 

“Baka!” she yelled. “I use a bow and arrow, that's nothing like a gun.”

 

“Hey, then why don't we just train using that?” asked Minako. The other girls shook their heads in disapproval. “Well, it would be original and easier for us being as there is no one here that really knows how to work a gun.”

 

“No one's using a bow and arrow because it doesn't match up to the danger of a gun with bullets, Minako,” muttered Rei. Minako sighed with a frown.

 

“Rei please,” pleaded Usagi. “We need you. No one else comes close like you do.” With a scowl Rei reluctantly accepted the task at hand.

 

“So far, we're training,” started Minako. “That's not a bad start. Then again, I don't think I would know what a good start was…”

 

“Locations,” said Ami. “We cannot do this in the open. We need a designated spot and need to find an efficient way to meet. We can't just walk there all together because someone may want to know what we do. If they don't know we're meeting to train then they'll never ask.”

 

“There's an old abandoned warehouse down the street from my place,” said Minako.

 

“That location is too attractive to others, Minako, we don't want to chance getting caught by anybody,” replied Ami.

 

“We could do it in my basement,” said Usagi. They all stopped to consider this and frowned.

 

“It's too small, we need something bigger,” said Rei.

 

“What I want to know is how we're going to get guns,” muttered Minako. Each girl gulped at the said problem but didn't quite know if they were nervous because they had no way of buying a gun or if it was the idea that they would have to use them.

 

“Let's not worry about that yet,” said Rei.

 

“I have a friend that owns a junkyard,” said Makoto slowly. “He might let us use it.”

 

“A junkyard…” started Ami. “That's perfect.”

 

“Yeah,” nodded Rei. “Who would go looking for us there?”

 

“Better yet, how are we going to get there without people seeing?” Asked Minako. Unanimously the girls glowered at her.

 

“Well you're just a big ball of sunshine aren't you,” remarked Artemis sarcastically.

 

“What,” said Minako in her defense. “I'm just trying to make sure we don't leave any gaps that's all.”

 

“Well, you can be a little less pessimistic sounding and more helpful,” retorted Rei. Minako sweat dropped and scratched her head.

 

“Sorry guys, I guess I was being a little annoying.”

 

“A little?” questioned Rei.

 

“Okay Rei, I apologized already, isn't that enough?”

 

“Guys, guys, that's enough. Please, let's figure everything out so that we can start,” said Makoto.

 

“Tomorrow,” started Ami. “We each need to do what we usually do. I'll figure out a way to get to the junkyard without anyone seeing and we'll have another meeting here at the same time. I'll tell you the plans but I will not type it out for you nor will you write it down anywhere. We need to keep this in our heads and resume life as if nothing happened.”

 

“Wow Ami,” said Minako with a giddy expression on her face. “You sound like a pro!”

 

“This is so cool!” cried Usagi with throbbing heart-eyes. “I feel like a secret agent already!”

 

“Baka,” muttered Rei under her breath.

 

Ami sweat dropped at both of them and continued.

 

“Tell no one of this and don't even make mention of anything near close to what has been discussed in this meeting. Do not worry about anything that we have to do yet, just leave it for tomorrow. Guys, I want all of you to relax tomorrow and enjoy yourselves because we don't know if we'll be so lax later on,” with that said that girls sat in silence.

 

“I will not fail,” said Minako cheekily and burst out laughing along with Usagi and Makoto.

 

“You're so dumb,” scoffed Rei, as she too couldn't hold from laughing.

 

Artemis shook his head and smiled. Ami had started laughing and a small pillow fight had broken out. They were so young and although they had seen more than any other adult, he knew that they were as naïve as every other typical teenager. He frowned as he pictured them being different from how they were now. Would training taint their personalities? Would they become the heartless soldier with eyes only on duty and completed missions? He suddenly felt himself start missing the sparkling eyes, drooling over boys, bad grades and meaningless fights that he knew he'd see less of. If nothing good came out of this he only hoped for one thing. That they wouldn't grow apart and lose each other before they figured out how cold regular human interaction could be. And more than anything, he prayed that they'd still be the smiling, imperfect, cheeky and clumsy girls he grew to love but somehow his mind doubted it. They'd find something different in this journey and they would never be the same again.

 

The feathers in the pillows seem suspended in the air as the girls panted in exhaustion. Minako looked over to Rei and took a side-glance at Makoto slightly nodding towards Artemis' way. The brunette and the raven-haired girls smiled broadly in understanding and yelled in harmonic unison.

 

“Pillow Fight!” they cried and smothered Artemis who had expected the blow. He jumped over Minako's pillow, ducked under Makoto's, moved to the side from Rei's, narrowly escaped Ami's and got clobbered by Usagi's relentless cotton pillow. Usagi stood triumphantly as the girls cheered and Artemis' eyes resembled nothing less than swirls.

 

“Uhhh…” he groaned as he swayed back and forth like a drunk kitty and dropped.

 

“Aww,” droned Minako as she affectionately picked Artemis up into her arms. “Poor kitty.”

 

Luna's eyes fluttered open to view pitch-black. She hissed as she felt a sharp stab of pain on her right side. She tried to stand but failed pathetically. She was moving, or at least the thing she was in was moving. She flinched as she felt the box land harshly with the surface of a floor or wooden table. She could hear a delighted squeal and closed her eyes when the unsuspecting light filtered into the now opened lid. She forced herself to look up and could only see the gleaming charcoal eyes of what seemed to be a thrilled adolescent. Confusion filled her head as she could do nothing but stare.

 

“Hello kitty.”

 

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