People tend to settle into a routine once they have been in a particular situation long enough. The more peculiar the situation compared to what they used to consider normal, the longer it can take to adjust, or at least that’s what common sense might dictate. In which case common sense rather underestimates humanity and its ability to adapt.
“I’m late!” cried a certain young woman as she dashed out of the door, a piece of her breakfast being greedily gobbled down while her other hand grabbed at her bag. It was a school day with a “y” at the end of its name, therefore Usagi Tsukino was running late. All part of her routine. Practically written into the schedule, if she were organised enough to have one. If she ever did, she’d lose it by the end of the week anyway.
Continuing with the idea of the hypothetical schedule, were such a thing in existence then it would almost certainly look like this: Wake up. Realise what the time is. Madcap dash to school. Bored. Bored. Slight spike of excitement, followed by more crushing boredom. Lunch! Eat lunch with great enthusiasm. Return to class with proportionally opposite enthusiasm (which would indicate that Ami probably wrote this part of the schedule). Idly fantasise about chewing through own neck to escape boredom. Hometime! Something freaky happens. Get a little scared. Meet with the others, develop a battle plan. Meet monster. Get really scared. Beat monster (yay!) and set free all the victims. Go home. Forget about homework or the test the next day. Gorge on food. Sleep.
One half of this seems rather disconnected from the other half, doesn’t it? One half is too boring, the other half too exciting. Well. Usagi didn’t really mind, exactly. An emotional roller coaster ride, the kind of thing many people dream of living. A double life full of action, danger, intrigue, romance! Oh, but she could do with a little more of the romance. The only trouble was that danger was quite often right around the next -
“Ow!”
Two girls knocked heads, and collapsed onto the pavement. One landed on her rear, the other was able to twist around, caught herself from falling, realised it looked sort of suspicious that someone would be <i>that</i> acrobatic, and allowed herself to land with minimal injury to herself. Which would have had the effect of making her seem more suspicious rather than less, but Usagi didn’t even notice so what the hell.
Usagi picked herself off the ground and looked at the girl she’d just run into. A cheerleader by the looks of things. Pretty typical kind of look. Sort of pinkish hair tied up in twin pigtails down either side of her head. The girl was rather adorable, in a way. Usagi caught herself blushing, not noticing that the other girl was behaving in much the same way.
“Uh…” the pink-haired girl said. “Hi. I’m Momo. Sorry about this, but I’m a little bit lost.”
“Lost?” Usagi said, snapping out of her fascination with this girl. Something about her felt kinda familiar for some reason. “Where were you going?”
“Well… My school’s baseball team is playing Juuban’s today. I’m supposed to be on the cheerleading team. Say… That uniform… You wouldn’t happen to be <i>the enemy</i>, wouldja?”
“I suppose I am,” Usagi replied, dusting herself off. “I’m not really interested in the school sporting events, though.” Beyond a few idle fantasies about a couple of the players.
“N-Not interested?” Momo gasped, seeming genuinely shocked by that particular revelation. “But- But where’s your team spirit?”
Which was not entirely an easy question to answer. How does someone explain that the only team they’re particularly interested in rooting for is the one that saves people’s lives on a regular basis?
“W-Well, I’ve never really enjoyed any of those games. It just seems like a lot of pointless running around, and -”
“Pointless running around?!” Momo cried, suddenly in her face. “Hmph! Well! You can forget about taking me to your school, then! If this is what you’re all like, your team must have the motivation of a falling stone. We’re going to walk all over you.”
Usagi stared blankly at her, a little confused by the reaction. Shouldn’t she be happy her team was apparently going to win so easily? What was she so annoyed about?
“Yeppers, I bet the entire Juuban body is just like that!” Momo pronounced, seeming to cheer up a little bit. She stuck her hands on her hips and smirked at Usagi. “Nothing but a bunch of drab boring girls that, like, don’t care about anything at all!”
“H-hey, wait a minute!” Usagi sniffed. “I care about stuff! Really!”
“Oh, yeah?” Momo quirked an eyebrow. “Then why doncha show up to the game today and root for your team? You know. Unless you really don’t care about who wins or loses or anything like that. Nah, what am I saying? There’s no chance you’ll be there, none at all!”
“Hmph! Alright! Fine! I’ll be there!” Usagi folded her arms, and began to stalk off towards the school. “Just to show you up, I’ll be calling them on the most out of anyone!”
“Now, that’s more like it!” Momo declared. “Now. Where’s this school of yours?”
Usagi, not for the first time (even just counting today) felt rather confused. What was with this girl? Her behaviour didn’t make any sense at all, and why did she have this lingering feeling like she’d just been tricked?
<hr>
So. Usagi had just spent an entire day being bored at school. Now she had the privilege of spending her time discovering whole new ways of boredom. You see, there are indeed many fascinating aspects of baseball provided that one is familiar with certain things. Statistics. Strategy. The team history (for either, or both). The rules of the game. Usagi knew pretty close to damn near nothing about any of these subjects. But she was learning one thing. One very important, very crucial thing.
It’s so much worse being bored out of your mind when absolutely nobody else around you is. Though she didn’t understand the unsettling feeling in the back of her mind about it all, it was almost certainly a consequence of unconscious peer pressure. They’re enjoying themselves. Why aren’t I?
“Come on already, move those legs!” one audience member yelled. True enough. The players had started out very enthusiastically, but their stamina must suck. They were practically dragging their heels. Which, you know, wasn’t exactly helping her enthusiasm with the game.
Usagi’s stomach roared like a lion, and everyone around her shot dirty looks in her direction. She nervously rubbed the back of her head and tried to laugh it off, but - Screw it. She was getting eats. It wasn’t like she was leaving the game or anything, she was just grabbing something to shove down her gullet. Or maybe a dozen somethings. Depended how much it cost, and how much she could carry.
“Race you to the concession stand!” an elderly gentleman suddenly shouted, and before Usagi even knew what was happening the two of them were in a race. She arrived first, clasping the stand to keep herself upright. She’d won. Ha!
Why did she do that? Hang on. Really now. Why did she do that? That didn’t make any sense at all! Her? Running when she didn’t need to? It was like this weird feeling that she absolutely had to win just washed right over her mind and away she went.
“What’ll it be?” the man at the counter asked. Usagi blinked and shook her head, then looked over what was on offer, quickly making up her mind what she would like - though she’d have to try to work out how much change she had. Ugh! Couldn’t even escape maths here of all places!
“Come on! Janken for it!”
Two men were arguing about something next to the stand, while a third watched with apparent vested interest. While the two of them pounded their hands three quick times and both threw out fists at the same time, the third man’s eyes caught hers. He smiled and silently slid next to Usagi, then seemed to just sort of fade out of existence like he was never there.
Freaky.
“Come on, girl! You know you have to win. Winning is everything. You’ve got to show a little bit of competitive spirit!”
Usagi whipped around. She wasn’t the smartest person around or the most observant person, but she wasn’t a complete idiot either. There it was again. A spike of something. The urge to compete with someone, anyone at all for any reason she could get away with. Even she could tell this wasn’t natural, and nor was it natural that everyone seemed to be arguing rather vehemently about basically nothing at all.
“And I’m telling you, they used seashell white to paint this wall!”
“Don’t be daft. It’s obviously cream!”
Ugh. It was so stupid. Couldn’t those idiots see it was eggshell white? She should just go over there, and - Nooooo, no, not doing that! With her heart pounding in her chest and her hand automatically reaching for a certain transformation item, Usagi slipped off into the bathroom and got herself ready for battle.
<hr>
To her great disappointment, the game wasn’t quite going as well as she had thought it would. It was so strange! Usually their cheers would light up the heart of their team, and let them find hidden reserves which they could use to push on towards certain vic-to-ry!
But not today. No. Today it didn’t seem to matter how many high kicks they delivered, how many backflips they performed or cutesy rhymes that pumped the audience right the way up, both crowds were psyched but the teams - Oh, dear goodness, the teams might as well be playing with rocks on their backs!
The innings ended, and neither team was particularly closer to victory than the other. It was all so terribly disappointing. Momo thought back to the girl from this morning. A joyless brat that should have had her eyes opened by this game, but instead would keep them closed forever. She felt sorry for the girl. Sorry for the things she would be made to miss out on.
“Ugh!” Sumiko tutted, pacing up and down the room. “What is with those guys today? They totally don’t seem to care! We’re cheering our butts off, and they play like that?”
“I know!” Ayako said, flopping back onto her seat and wiping sweat off her brow. “It’s like they’re possessed or something.”
Momo froze in mid gulp from her bottle of water. Say what now?
“Well, I would hardly say they were possessed,” Sumiko corrected, wagging her finger. “If they were possessed, they would be playing much better than this. No. It’s more like they’re being drained.”
Momo ominously swallowed her water, which is a harder thing to do than one might expect. “Ahem,” she said. “I, ah, I have to go and check something out. Be back in a minute!”
She dashed from the room, not certain what she was actually looking for. Of course something like this had to happen while she was by herself. Of course it did. If only Aoi was here, or Akane. Either of them would see it in a heartbeat! Instead she’d put solid money on her just running right past it without ever even seeing -
“Hs hs hs! Stupid humans!” an umpire hissed. “None of them even suspect a thing! This way is a little slower, but much less risky! We’ll drain these players dry before anyone even notices anything!”
Huh. Well then. That could happen instead, she supposed. Momo screeched to a halt and tapped at her watch. “Pink Cheer Champion! Loving Life Power Up!”
The swirl of pink energy was always so pretty to look at, so calming yet exciting at the same time. Momo felt the now familiar feeling of her clothes melting and shifting around her, becoming magically enhanced to withstand all manner of assault, be it physical or magical or anything else she didn’t know anything about. Which covered quite the broad spectrum, but <i>anyway</i>!
The monster tilted its big ugly head in her direction, and Momo firmly gripped her baton. “I am the Pink Cheer Champion of Love!” The monster seemed especially amused by this particular development, and made no effort to back away or escape. Well. That made this a fair bit easier. Before long Momo was twirling the baton right in its face, sending her love right into it. Before long it would fall over from a love overdose, and -
And nothing was happening. Momo pulled the baton away, and the umpire grabbed her wrist. “Oh no,” it hissed. “Please, do keep doing that. Your energy has a particular taste to it that I quite enjoy.”
In a word: Crud! Okay, Momo, not the time to panic. All that she had to do was think calmly, think rationally, and the best way to accomplish this was to knee him squarely in the balls and as soon as he dropped like a sack of potatoes (which the monster, obligingly, did) run like a maniac. Just like her momma always taught her.
<hr>
Running always seemed to be a part of this job, no matter how much Usagi wished it were otherwise. Mercifully her Sailor form appeared to have some physical modifications in place that prevented her from getting tired nearly as easily as any normal human, but even so she still didn’t particularly appreciate the experience. She did briefly wonder why that was, but discarded it for the more pressing question.
What the flying ham sandwich was going on?! There she was, catching out the youma in the act of doing something to some poor woman. Then she threw her tiara right into his back. It bounced off. She threw it again. And a third time. No effect at all. Nothing of the sort. Unless one counted it turning around and actively beginning to chase her with teeth bigger than her head and claws bigger than his teeth.
She needed to get the others in for this. No question of it. The guns, they were a little too big for her to pull off. Good thing she’d been sensible for once and actually - you know - used her communicator to give them a call, let them know what was going down before seeing what she could do about the situation herself. But still. Who knew how long it would take for them to show up?
For now all Sailor Moon could do was run. Run like the wind, and hope it didn’t catch up with her.
- Sailor Moon runs into Pink Cheer. Instant animosity.
- Sailor Moon and Pink Cheer run into the other's team.
- Sailor Moon and Pink Cheer run into their own team
- Something else
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