It's truly amazing to consider the sheer breadth and scope of what these 'fans' are capable of creating. Comics, toys, themed desk lamps, an amazing assortment of franchise labelled knick-knacks, clothing, makeup, pens, stationary of all sorts, just slap a character onto it or a logo and boom, it's merchandise and helping to fund the product.
The selection of what to bring back had left Beryl very nearly overwhelmed. The most rational thing to bring back would be one of these comics. The other merchandise was certainly interesting, but to her mind, it would help in very unpredictable ways. A sex toy with Sailor Moon's face on it? That could do almost anything!
No, what she needed above anything else was something that she could predict. This was a form of magic that was new to her (and that said something!) so she should definitely, absolutely, make sure to take something that was definitely going to be useful to her.
And that was when she found the wonderful world of fanfiction.
"Oh my word, what a delightful idea," Beryl cackled to herself. "My, my. They really do have some variety here, do they not?"
Producing art? That's one thing. But writing? Ah, anyone can do that. Do it well? That does take a bit more skill, but to write something and have it at least comprehensible? That didn't take a tremendous amount of skill. She could do it herself. Craft her own little tale, bring it into her reality - and make it real to her.
From there? Figure out a way to manipulate this reality from inside her own. If she could conquer both worlds, well and truly conquer them, she'd be able to expand her reach beyond anything she could have imagined. Fiction conquering reality! What an idea! Who needs the Moon Kingdom when she could have whole universes bowing before her!
"Queen Beryl has the power to seduce absolutely anyone," she wrote on a Sailor Moon embroidered napkin. "One day, she sat on Sailor Moon's face until she swore fealty, and it did not take very long. The end."
There we go. A simple, short story scribbled on a napkin. That's all it would take, right? Perfect. Absolutely perfect! Ah... But you know something? She couldn't quite help but grab a few other trinkets before heading back to her own reality. A figurine of herself, some Dark Kingdom themed clothing,and - ooh, this pen with her dearest Mamoru on it! How fitting it was that she'd scribbled her enemy's defeat with this very pen! She kissed it even as it vanished, fading into reality and rewriting absolutely everything. Now, all she'd need to do was find Sailor Moon - and get exactly what she had coming to her.
Except, of course, there was one small problem with what she'd written. Do you see it? It's not obvious. All the same, the best laid plans of mice and men...
======
The instant Beryl had returned to her native reality, things shifted, because of course they did. Things that were more real than reality filtered in, causing things to shift and twist once again. Because things were not already unrecognisable enough as it was, right?
Anyway, one must be wondering what, exactly, could be changed by bringing those items into this reality. Well, let's see: She'd brought in a figurine of herself, some Dark Kingdom themed attire, and a pen with Mamoru inscribed upon it.
The first change to come about was... That the Dark Kingdom had their own clothing line. Yes, really. They had their own clothing franchise, known to the public as the Dark Kingdom. How does that help them, aside from a source of revenue?
I mean, it's sort of like that Austin Powers bit, right? Dr Evil wants to do evil nonsense, while Number Two points out they're generally doing more evil and raking in more cash annually than any evil scheme could make it worth the while. Here they are, with a now wildly successful clothing merchandise store, that's making them oh so much money - but they still feel the need to drain life energy in order to revive a Dark God who would happily chew on their souls for all eternity for basically no good reason at all.
This does not assist them in the slightest - because it now gives the Sailors a base of operations to investigate. They were, at present, standing outside that headquarters staring up at the building in abject disbelief.
"I can't believe we missed this," Mars grumbled to herself. "I mean, Dark Kingdom Clothing? It seems pretty obvious."
"Many things do, in retrospect," Luna sagely advised.
"Historian's fallacy strikes again..." Ami muttered, staring more at Usagi's butt than the building itself. She'd like to historian that fallacy. And no, even her brilliant mind couldn't make sense of that innuendo. "So, shall we use our transformation pens to disguise ourselves and sneak inside?"
"Sounds like a plan to me, girls!" Usagi said. "Alright! Let's take the form of - "
She held her pen aloft - and wouldn't you know it, but there was a particular handsome masked stranger wearing a tuxedo upon it. The spell warped around the five of them, making them all seem like older versions of themselves, in their late 20s, with curvier bodies than they already had. Which were, it must be pointed out, already quite curvaceous.
They nodded to each other, and went on inside.
"Hello!" Minako chirped, taking the lead right away. "We're here on the guided tour after winning that contest! Where do we start? We're so excited to take a tour of the Dark Kingdom!"
"Ah...?" the secretary blinked rapidly at them. "I'm terribly sorry, what contest might that be...?"
"What contest might that be?" Minako said back to the other four with total, unfailing confidence. It was a bluff. A pretty enormous, blatant bluff - but getting inside the building proper would require something pretty outrageous. Like breaking and entering. Anyway, Minako didn’t miss a beat. “The international one,” she said brightly, waving a hand as if brushing away a trivial detail. “You know - entry via postcard, slogan on the back, ‘Dark Kingdom Clothing: Fashion to Die For!’ Ring any bells?”
Behind her, Usagi nodded enthusiastically, almost losing her balance. Ami pushed her glasses up, already scanning the lobby for exits. Rei maintained a serene, unimpressed expression that said this building is definitely cursed. Makoto cracked her knuckles and smiled politely.
"I see," the secretary said. "Uh, you would not mind waiting here for a few minutes? I'll find someone to come and see you."
And so, that's just what the disguised Sailors did. They waited in the lobby, taking a look around, with Usagi in particular finding herself looking at a picture of a tall redhead with crazy looking eyes, wearing a stylish black dress, with the name 'Beryl' under it.
"Okay, so she's different as well," Usagi grumbled to herself. "I think that's long enough. Do you reckon Sailor Pluto was able to get inside?"
"Probably," Rei whispered back. "But just in case..."
"Let's get in there ourselves!" Makoto said, nodding to some of the guards heading out.
They looked around. No cameras that they could see. They pulled out their transformation pens yet again - and became copies of those guards the moment they were out of sight! After that, it was a trivial matter for Ami to use her Mercury Computer to hack in, get past the security gate - and then they were inside the building.
And they found themselves a little more overwhelmed than they were expecting. It was a fairly big building with several floors. Where should they start?
"Over there!" Minako pointed in one direction.
"I want to check that place!" Rei whispered.
"No, there!" Makoto insisted.
As a matter of fact they were all pointing in different directions. Which left Usagi scratching her head, left with no alternative but to suggest the one thing that you should never, ever do:
"Let's split up. We'll cover more ground that way."
They all knew it was a bad idea - but they did it anyway. Behind enemy lines, ready to transform into a pretty Sailor Guardian at a moment's notice, the moment they realised they'd been detected. For now, let us follow Usagi herself, as she creeps through the building. Uncertain of what she's looking for, but sure that she'll find something in here. Something they can use to free Kotori, liberate her from -
"Hello there, Sailor Moon!" said a piece of the wall. Oh. Wait, that wasn't the wall. It was a really, really dark dress and she's tall. Oh my, she is tall and busty and pretty in an evil way. "Or should that be Usagi Tsukino?"
Yep, it had been just that easy. Just that simple, actually, for Beryl to find her.
"So, we meet at last," Beryl cackled, staring down at her with total malevolence. "Don't bother calling out for your friends. The walls in here are quite soundproofed. It's just you and me. So? What's your move, girl?"
"My move...?" Sailor Moon gasped, trying to back off, but in truth, only one thing was coming to mind right now. "My move is to... Let you sit on my face!"
Beryl sneered at her with full contempt, and she gestured to a table that Usagi could lay upon, while they got to work. That's it, right? Game over. Sailor Moon was allowing Queen Beryl to sit on her face until she yielded, and it would not take long. That was the way it had been written by the Queen, right?
"I'm going to enjoy the threesomes," Beryl smirked. "You, me and Tuxedo Mask! Hah! You'll get to watch him knock me - "
That was the moment Beryl's cheeks reached Usagi's face, and the moment that happened, something peculiar followed with it. Beryl's eyes crossed and she totally forgot how to speak.
For you see, Beryl had made a critical, obvious pronoun failure: The way she'd phrased the sentence had left it, shall we say, rather ambiguous as to which 'she' had been meant by the second 'she'. "One day, she sat on Sailor Moon's face until she swore fealty, and it did not take very long. The end."
A reading of that sentence, stripped of context, might make it seem like she meant herself twice over with the two 'she' there, right? It's only with the context of her intent and her personality that we infer her actual meaning. Well, as it turns out, reality doesn't really take context into account when things start to warp it. Or maybe it does, and doesn't appreciate people trying to do it on purpose, and so -
"That tongue is far too gooooood~" Beryl wailed, her voice a much higher octave than normal. "I give, I swear fealty! Please, I cannot take it any longer~"
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