MarshAngel
watsonma@hotmail.com
http://angelmoon.sinfree.net
rated R-NC17
disclaimer: standard i.e.: no claim of ownership has or will be made
 
 

This is an alternate reality/first season story. There is NO Mamoru (Darien), NO Tuxedo Kamen, NO Rini and NO outer scouts. Usagi is known to be the Princess, they've defeated Beryl and they have no real memories of the past. Usagi and friends are around sixteen.  Further explanations? Email.
This fanfic is tentatively rated R and if so requested I will change the rating to NC-17 but I don’t think its too explicit so I’ll leave it at R for now.
 

Touch
Chapter 1

She tossed and turned in her sleep, rumpling the sheets in the throes of the dream that had caught her in its grasp. Suddenly she sat up, breathing hard. For a few moments some remnant of the dream remained, refusing to leave until finally the bright light of the sun came peaking in through the blinds. She forgot the dream moments later, the only evidence being her sweaty clothing, weariness, and a disturbing awareness of having experienced something but no knowledge of whether the experience had been a good one.

Usagi crawled lethargically out of bed. Life just wasn't fair. She had already been tired when she'd crawled into bed at two a.m. The dream had taken a lot out of her and as amazing as it was that she was up with enough time to get ready for school without rush, she could have done with the extra sleep. Had it been any other time she might have tried to go back to bed, but the one thing she was certain of just then was that there was no getting any more sleep after a dream like that.
She would have liked to sleep for a little bit longer but she couldn't shake the feeling that had settled over her. It wasn't something she could explain if asked, but she knew instinctively just closing her eyes would bring it all back and that was something she was almost sure she didn't want. Why should she fear a dream she couldn't even remember?

Sluggishly she got dressed, forcibly pushing any thought of the night's disturbance to the back of her mind. A much crueler fate awaited her today, the glory of education.

She hated school. It had been that way for a long while now. She didn't think she was stupid but going to school always made her feel that way. What wasn't completely boring was so complicated she always figured it out the week after the test when it was no longer relevant. She couldn't do well in anything she wasn't interested in and math topped the list of uninteresting subjects, followed by pretty much every other subject in the curriculum. Her only saving graces were art class and gym.

She hated gym too. She made an ass out of her self more times than not and it was almost always embarrassing to fall flat on her ass while her fellow students laughed or shook their heads in pity. Fortunately her gym teacher always took pity on her when it came time to hand out the grades, after all she did try. It helped the aesthetic appearance of the report card and her overall average. As for art, she wasn't half bad and it was more than enough to make the grade.

She pulled on her shoes, the last ugly piece to complete the ugly ensemble that was the uniform she had to wear to school. She sometimes wished she could have a uniform more stylish like her friend Rei's. Rei's uniform skirt was also a lot shorter which was much more pleasing to the eye and she had to admit she had a secret desire to look sexier. If one was forced to attend the god-awful institution they should be able to look good doing it. She finished dressing and trudged downstairs. Her mother hadn't fixed her any breakfast, which wasn't surprising considering she'd never actually had time to eat before.

"Usagi you're awake!" Her mother announced, surprised to see her up out of bed.

"Yeah I think so," Usagi grumbled beneath her breath.

Her mother chuckled under her breath. To say her daughter wasn't a morning person was an understatement. She was usually a carefree lighthearted person but never in the morning. Lately though, she hadn't seemed as carefree as she used to be.

Usagi ate cold cereal in silence. There wasn't much to say at this time of day. It was criminal that school started so early. Honestly she wouldn't mind staying an hour or two later in the evening if she could just have another hour in bed in the mornings.

On her way to school she walked slowly mulling over the mess that had become her life. She used to wish to be a superhero but that had been the dream of a child and she wasn't a child anymore. It was as though her life had become the epitome of a Chinese curse. "May you have everything you wish for" She'd become a superhero much to her despair. The curse had stopped working though, because she hadn't yet gotten her wish that evil would cease to exist and that she wouldn't need to fight anymore. The curse had selective hearing.

There were days she wished she'd never met Luna at all. She dreamed of the carefree days before she'd first shouted the words told to her by her talking cat Luna, the words that transformed her into Sailor Moon. Those simple words had changed her life forever.
At almost fifteen years old she'd just begun to develop ideas about what she'd wanted to do with her life. The moments after her first battle was completed, and she had, by herself, triumphed, she came to a realization and her dreams seemed to fly out the window. Her life, her choices were no longer entirely her own and after that it had been one sacrifice after another.

Her relationships were the first to go. The first of them to fall apart were the friendships she'd had since before she could remember. Naru, Mariko, Jun, they were mere acquaintances now. The most hurtful had been the deterioration of the close relationship with her parents. How could she maintain a healthy and trusting relationship with the two people who loved her most in the world when she couldn't even tell them a fundamental truth about herself?

Oddly enough she could remember hating school a little less in her pre-Sailor Moon days. Of course she'd also been a somewhat better student back then. She had not been by any stretch of the imagination brilliant, but her mind and time had been a lot less occupied. She'd had, what she liked to term, a good steady stretch of mediocrity occasionally punctuated by moments of brilliance and the occasional failure. What she had now was a long stretch of brilliant failures intermittently punctuated by spurts of mediocrity.

When she and Luna had discovered other senshi together, she'd actually thought for a moment that the pressure on her might lessen. Oddly enough it only seemed to increase. There were now more people to protect, friends she loved whose lives depended on her not making a mess of situations, more people whose very presence reminded her why she'd never have a normal life.

She wasn't a normal girl anymore. It was sickening that while everyone was aiming so desperately to be anything but average she would give up her supposed claim to royalty and vast powers just to be an average teenager worrying about boys, hair, and how far to go with their boyfriend. Boys and sex weren't even something she thought about; it didn't fit into her schedule.

She had no hopes of falling in love anytime in the future and fortunately there were no tempting male prospects anywhere to cause her to wallow in the misery of that situation. She couldn't help but be jealous of all the girls who once they'd begun high school had plunged immediately into the dating arena. It was a daunting prospect to be facing a future alone.

Every girl dreamed of being a princess. She'd been informed she was one but had no qualities to prove it. Her kingdom was dust; her past forgotten and all she had left to prove it ever existed was a powerful rock, the remnants of her court, and an obligation to protect this planet. She didn't even have a Prince Charming.
Usagi snapped out of her reverie and became aware that a few other students passed her by on their way looking at her oddly as though they'd never seen her before. Then again they just might not have. It was a rare thing to be walking to school at a normal pace and with a good likelihood of making it there on time.

A sudden chill passed through her and she froze. There was no wind and it was a relatively warm morning. The fine blonde hairs on her skin stood up and she couldn't shake the feeling that there was someone watching her. She turned around suddenly, her blonde pigtails swinging over her shoulders. It was an intensified version of the feeling she'd had just before she'd woken up. Her eyes searched her environment.

There was nothing there, nothing out of the ordinary anyway; just people on their way to work and school.

She turned back and continued on to school. She was almost certain there had been someone there, or something. It was going to be a long day.
 
 

She was bored but that was normal. There was nothing particularly interesting about geometry. As far as she was concerned she’d learned all the geometry she was ever going to need in kindergarten. Circles, squares and rectangles, she recognized them and that was all that mattered. She turned her eyes away from her teacher. If she kept her eyes on the chalkboard for another second, they would continue to close until she was all but snoring. She was so tired.

 She stared out the window hoping for something interesting to fly by. Anything out there would be more interesting than what was inside. There was nothing but the breeze moving through the trees. She continued to look and for a stray moment she could swear she felt the wind on her skin. She thought she heard it moving through the trees and then she swore the wind spoke her name.

She was imagining things. She obviously needed some sleep. She turned back to the chalkboard but was instantly at a loss as to exactly what her teacher was talking about and her attention wandered once again right out the window.

There it was again, the chill of a slight breeze on her skin and the distant sound of her name on the breeze. She felt as though she were staring directly into something. Something out there was staring right at her she could feel it.

With resolve to put the strangeness out of her mind she turned away from the window. Daydreaming was getting nowhere; she turned her attention back to the chalkboard. She tried to pay attention. She followed the busy orange patterns in her teacher’s tie back and forth until her eyes closed.

“Serenity”

Someone was touching her. It didn’t feel quite like hands but whatever it was traced the length of her spine she felt it slide all the way down her back to caress her bottom as though her clothes weren’t there, sliding up her stomach to her breasts and back down again between her legs. She was naked.

She screamed in shock, waking to reality instantly and suddenly she was aware that her entire class was staring at her. She thought she’d be used to embarrassment by now, having experienced it so often, but it was always new and upsetting, especially in this instance.

When it was ascertained that she’d been napping and dreaming, the giggles began and Usagi’s face turned bright red with embarrassment. She couldn’t believe she was having an erotic dream in class and one that had seemed so very real. She’d heard of being sexually frustrated but certainly not to that degree.

“I’ll see you after class Usagi,” her teacher announced.
Why did he bother she wondered. She was sure it was just detention. Everyday she came prepared for that seemingly certain fact. It seemed inevitable she’d do something worthy of staying after school. One would think by now her teachers would get it into their heads to try something new, seeing as how multiple detentions had changed nothing.

Usagi sighed and went back to staring out the window. Not ten minutes later, Mr. Mitchell snapped at her for not paying attention.

“Ms. Tsukino if you’re not going to pay attention perhaps you’d prefer to write 2000 words on what’s so interesting out the window.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“Don’t be sorry. Pay attention. If you do, you might just pass the next test.” 

 

And that was how she found herself to be sitting alone in an empty room at the end of the school day pen poised over her paper. She found it both comforting and dispiriting that she was almost always the only one in detention. It seemed to speak volumes about her in comparison to every other student in school. On the other hand, the quiet and solitude was somewhat comforting.

She glanced up at Mr. Mitchell, The half American Japanese math teacher who made every school morning a miserable one. He had a mildy discontented look on his face as he corrected papers, occasionally glancing up at the clock. If he had ever shown anything besides stiff formality to her she might have felt a little bit of sympathy for him being stuck with detention duty but she couldn’t help but feel he, like so many of her teachers, deserved it.

She had been assigned to write an essay, as usual, as a result of a lack of creative thinking on the part of anyone who’d ever had detention. She’d written this particular essay a thousand times and she was quite good at it. She pretty much had it memorized and well refined. She was also certain that whichever poor fool of a teacher got stuck with detention never read it. Every once in a while she’d write a silly little line of nonsense in the middle that made no sense, just to test out her theory. It was never caught. She could probably write an entirely different essay and no one would notice. So she began.

She began to write an essay on why she hated school and why detention was a waste of time, why everything was just so pointless. She was halfway through the second page when the feeling came over her that someone was watching her, looking over her shoulder. She could almost feel the heat of the man’s body. She was almost certain she felt a warm breath pass over her neck sending shivers down her spine.

She was sure it was a man. She didn’t know why or how but in her mind there was no doubt.

She stood up suddenly and turned around but there was nothing there, nothing but cool empty air and empty chairs all around.

“Is there a problem Ms. Tsukino?”

Usagi turned back around, searching the face of her teacher for any sign that he’d seen someone else in the room, though she knew he hadn’t.

“It’s nothing,” She explained. He frowned and returned to his work.

Usagi turned her attention back to the essay she’d been in the middle of. She’d been in the midst of explaining the misery of sitting through an entire day frustratingly aware that she’d know nothing at the end of it. When she looked down at her papers however, there was nothing there, nothing but three little words that chilled her to the bone, written in her own sloppy penmanship.

I’m watching you

She began to shake, continuing to stare at the words. She stood up suddenly glancing around hurriedly. Still, no one was there.

“Usagi! What is the matter?”

How was she to answer that question? What was she to say? How could she explain that she thought someone she couldn’t see was following her around, watching her and writing notes on her paper.

“I…. I thought I saw a bug,” she explained shakily. “It’s gone now,” she whispered.

He looked at her piercingly for a moment before returning his attention to the papers he was grading. At this very moment he was probably giving her an F.

She sat back down at her desk and looked down at her papers. The words were gone. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing but her essay.

 

 

“OK. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Huh?” Usagi questioned confused. She was sitting cross-legged on the tatami mat that covered the floor of Rei’s temple. She had been staring unfocused through the open doorway. She was thinking whether or not to tell her friends about what had happened earlier in the day. It could all be in her head. What if she was losing her mind? There was no way to prove that anything had happened. All she had were some bad feelings and a note that had disappeared and may not have existed in the first place.

“It’s nothing Rei. I’m just tired.”

“If you say so,” Rei commented, disbelieving. She knew her friend well. Something was bothering her and it didn’t require psychic abilities to guess that.

Usagi remained silent, continuing to stare. Rei worried about Usagi a lot recently. It seemed she was gradually growing more and more depressed, if that was the right word. Usagi’s emotions had grown erratic and her attitude more abrasive than before. After a year of battling the forces of evil she seemed tired.

Perhaps she was going through a new adjustment. Rei suspected that Usagi was coming to terms with the fact that all her childhood dreams may account for nothing thanks to the fact that she may have to face a lifetime of battling evil.

“Do you like fighting Rei?” Usagi asked quietly.”

“I take it you mean the Dark Kingdom and evil aliens from outer space?”

“Yeah, them,” Usagi replied.

The dark-haired priestess was silent for a moment. “I don’t like having to fight but I do like the feeling of having accomplished something when it’s all over. There is a thrill in triumphing over your enemy.”

“I hate having to fight. I really hate it. I’m happy when the battle’s over but it’s never really over. Sometimes I just feel like it will never end and we’ll never win. I mean for crying out loud we defeated Beryl and just when we thought it was all over, the leftovers of her useless kingdom decide to organize and continue in her place. What if something should happen to one of us what would happen then?”

“Then the rest will keep fighting Usagi.

“Just because we face evil directly all the time doesn’t mean that everyone else doesn’t fight it in some way. All those people everyday out there fight and they don’t have the powers we do. Even if you didn’t have the powers you do, chances are you’d be fighting something else in a different way; it’s our destiny. There is no reason to believe you’d be any happier without them.

“There is a certain happiness to be gained from being able to face evil directly and triumph over it. Everyday people can only fight the products of evil. We get the chance to destroy the source of so much pain. Sometimes it gets tedious but it’s worth it.”

“Thanks. I guess I needed to hear that.” She didn’t sound too overjoyed.

“What you really need is a kick in the ass.”

“Let me guess, you’re volunteering?” Usagi said snidely.

“Of course. Who better to do the job?”

“Just about anyone with a smaller foot.” Usagi replied

“Aren’t you supposed to be sweet and innocent? I swear you’re turning into a bitter sarcastic hag.”

“Yes well princesses are supposed to be smart, beautiful and graceful too and I’m none of those either so pardon me if I grow just a little bit bitter.”

“If it makes you feel better, you may not be graceful or brilliant but somebody hit you with a pretty stick and one out of three is better than none at all.”

“I don’t know whether to thank you or smack you.”

“I suggest bowing at my feet in gratitude. I don’t hand out compliments just to anyone.”

“That explains why you’re so bad at it.”

 

 

Usagi walked home later the same evening with the sun setting. The warmth of the last surrounding glow of the sun sinking on the horizon surrounded her, warming her skin and it was almost as though the rest of the day had never even occurred. She basked in its glow forgetting all her problems.

She was halfway home when she was suddenly caught in a sudden rush of wind. It was a warm breeze that felt good against her skin sending her skirt flying up. Fortunately there was no one around and she giggled as she tried to get control of her skirt. Her blonde pigtails wrapped themselves around her body and the silky strands of blonde hair tickled her skin lightly.

Seemingly out of nowhere a torrent of rose petals came flying in on the breeze, twirling around her as if in a tornado. They were like icy kisses as they touched her skin, soft but cold. Each petal seemed to melt away as it touched her skin or the ground. Her smile faded as she pondered the strangeness of the situation. The breeze didn’t seem to touch anything else. Everything else was perfectly still.

In an instant, the breeze turned icy cold making her feel like her skin was frozen and then it all suddenly stopped.

Usagi began to walk faster but she knew she wasn’t getting away from the eyes that she was sure were watching her, the voice that whispered her name on the breeze and laughed at her fear. She ran into her house slamming the door behind her, breathing hard with fear.

“Usagi! You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her mother commented

Maybe that’s what it was…. A ghost.

“Maybe” she whispered. She ran up the stairs, leaving her confused mother looking up behind her pondering the strangeness of teenagers.

 In a world where she was a super heroine and killed evil monsters from another dimension it was strange how the possibility of a ghost never even occurred to her. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in ghosts, although given the strange things that happened on a daily basis the existence of ghosts was definitely within the realm of possibility and considering the things she’d faced in the past it would be on the more benign side of supernatural entities.

Usagi didn’t want to go to sleep. The rose petal incident earlier in the evening had brought back the feeling she’d had when she’d woken up this morning, technically yesterday. She looked at the digital clock that told her it was one a.m. She needed to go to bed but she was afraid that sleep would leave her vulnerable.

 It was a stupid thought. She’d been awake all day and that hadn’t changed anything. There was something about the darkness of night that seemed somehow menacing however. All those bad things that happened in the world, so much of it happened at night. Ghosts, murderers, thieves, youma, boogiemen and the list went on of the creatures that used the cover of night to commit their evil deeds. It was enough to make one never want to close their eyes.

It was fortunate that where the mind was unwilling the body was weak. 
Half an hour later her eyes closed she was too worn out from another midnight attack of the stupid youmas to keep her eyes open another second. Against her will, she slept.

 

“Serenity “

Usagi tossed restlessly in her sleep. She moaned out loud as she felt a hand run over the skin of her smooth flat stomach and up to her breasts. A finger teased her nipple, which hardened beneath the touch of the warm hand. Something hot and wet, a tongue, moved over her breast, teasing her taut, hardened nipple and she felt hands caressing her body.

The hands seemed to be everywhere all at once, setting her skin afire, knowing exactly where to touch her to make her back arch sensuously with pleasure. A mouth closed over hers as it opened in a gasp. The kiss wasn’t gentle but hard and filled with passion and it left her gasping for breath and something more.

She sat up suddenly. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It was just a dream. Then why was her shirt unbuttoned, her lips swollen, and her nipples red?

Usagi burst into tears.