Character Sketches #1, Sailor Mercury - Part III, "Mercury"
Epilogue: In which a new foe is encountered.

TOKYO (AP)--Japanese authorities again denied reports of vigilante schoolgirls raging rampant in the streets of Tokyo last night.

At about 11:38pm local time, police responded to reports of a "monster" attacking several late night patrons of a local coffeehouse. Upon arrival, police found only dazed witnesses and a half destroyed business.

Eyewitnesses described the monster as "abominable," "appalling," and "frightening." They also claimed that the monster was defeated by the "Sailor Scouts," an urban legend well known in Japan.

The Juuban minister of safety said, "We see no reason to add credibility to these wild, unsubstantiated rumors. They are obviously the result of wild imaginations and too much sake."

It was the fifth such attack since January 3.

"BURNING MANDALA!" The flames engulfed the struggling daimon, who was befuddled by his attackers. He hadn't been told to expect trouble. He hadn't been told to expect five teenage girls in Technicolor sailor fuku. And he definitely didn't expect them to, at last count, freeze, electrocute, blast, and burn him.

It was a typical night for the Sailor Senshi.

"Okay, Sailor Moon, nail him!" shouted Jupiter. The blond sporting two outrageous ponytails nodded, and warmed up her attack.

"MOON SPIRAL HEART ATTACK!" There was an amazing display of magic and light, and then, as the wielder of the Cutie Moon Rod would have said, the youma was moondusted.

Eudial raced away. Yet another defeat. My, but these things were getting annoying. Professor Tomoe would not be pleased.

In the shadows, a couple of dark figures watched the defeat. The heart crystal had once again been impure, and they had stepped out as soon as that was apparent. The others had restored the crystal to its owner, and there was no need for them to assist the inner senshi. So Sailors Uranus and Neptune left as well.

The senshi gathered around as the daimon's ashes began to disappear. For a moment, no one said a word, but merely rested, recuperating from the battle. Sailor Moon was the first to speak.

"Good job, guys. See ya tomorrow!" And with that, the pretty suited warrior for love and justice was suddenly a flighty teenage girl wearing an abbreviated schoolgirl uniform. Her four companions could only sigh, as usual. The second to speak was the green and pink clad one.

"Sailor Mercury, have you been able to determine who's been behind these attacks?" For the past few weeks, daimon attacks had increased, without explanation. The assaults were frustratingly dangerous, with heart crystals being taken left and right.

"Well, I've ruled out the Dark Kingdom, extraterrestials, the Black Moon Kingdom, and yakuza. Anything else is still possible. I'll work on it some more tomorrow, but I think--" here, she was interrupted by a yawn from Mars "--we should call it a night."

This was followed by nods of assent, and the four split up to return to their respective homes. Mercury walked on alone, concentrating so hard on the problem at hand that she forgot her appearance until she was halfway home. "Oops," she said, and she turned back into Mizuno Ami. Hearing a clicking sound, she turned around, to find a can rolling across the well-lit street. Muttering a few words to herself on how sloppy some people were, she walked on, only to stop some minutes later outside a rather nice, nondescript home.

Elsewhere, Nagasome Akira cursed his luck. He had been about to get a great shot of Sailor Mercury when something had given him a vicious shove in the back. Picking himself up, he could only see a nondescript schoolgirl walking home. Rather late for her to be going out alone, but it wasn't his business. He decided to concentrate on how he was going to explain this one to his boss.

Somewhere other than that, Sailor Pluto smiled to herself. Her job was to protect the timeline. But sometimes the timeline needed a little nudge. Or, as in Akira's case, a cross-check to the back with a Staff of Time.

And after all, who would know the difference?

At her home, Ami performed the ritual of creeping through the bushes to sneak through an open window. From there, it was up the steps to her room. (Note: a heck of a lot of Ami fanboys would kill for a protracted account of Ami's undressing. You're not getting it, so there.) Changing into a night gown, she went to sleep.

A week later, Ami awoke to her alarm clock, and then looked in surprise at the well-lit walls. Normally, the room was quite dark at 5:00am, but now it was almost as bright as day. In an effort to figure out what was going on, she rose and peeked through the blinds.

The sun shone in her face.

Reeling, she staggered back to sit on the bed. "What's going on?" she whispered. Then she remembered. Daylight Savings Time. Damn Amerikajin.

"Oh well," she muttered. She went downstairs to get some coffee ready. Her mother usually did it, but she was working late at the ER and wouldn't be home for awhile. And her father, of course, was somewhere in the south of Japan, drawing for some H-manga company. He frequently wrote, and she often answered, due to some strange compulsion she felt about it. She couldn't remember where she heard it, but she knew somehow that bad things would happen if she didn't give him frequent reports of exactly where she was.

It was like the urges she got to tap into satellite pictures of Greenland, or to tell her mother that she loved her frequently.

Strange.

She shrugged at the top of the stairs and went down them, visions of hot showers and differential equations in her head.

The End.