[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 1 [Dark/Comedy]

[Brian Randall]

Yeah, this is much delayed and greatly overdue....  So.  As usual,
take what comments are worthwhile, ignore those that aren't.

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 7:45 PM, Paul Durant <031537 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Author's Notes:
>
>    I posted this a year ago or so for a "what would happen if someone other than
>  the Outer Senshi got Hotaru after the end of season 3" challenge. I am reposting
>  it now because A: I have revised it and added scenes as well as super-special-
>  awesome bonus content, and B: I know nobody saved or remembered it from a
>  year ago and nobody would read chapter 2 through 5 if they never read chapter 1.
>  So here you go.

Sounds reasonable.

>    This is a crossover between Sailor Moon and the DARK.MATTER campaign
>  setting for the Alternity science-fiction roleplaying game. If you don't know what
>  that is, and I know you don't, I will explain.

Good!

>    The world of DARK.MATTER resembles our own superficially, but only
>  because shadowy powers are working to hide everything that would make it
>  seem unusual. A world where aliens secretly influence human society,
>  mysterious cyborgs plot to infect and replace humanity in secret, people
>  born with strange psychic powers are whisked away to clandestine
>  government labs under cover of darkness never to be seen again, demons
>  walk the shadows sowing fear and unrest, the Freemasons and the UN plot
>  to instutite a New World Order, and Lee Harvey Oswald most certainly did
>  not act alone. It's a world of paranoia and conspiracy straight out of
>  the dreams of the most fevered Usenet kook.

Stands to reason.

>    The incidences of strange, unexplainable phenomena such as telepathy,
>  magic, extradimensional visitors, and Chupacabras are tied to a
>  phenomenon known as the "Dark Tide", or the density of dark matter in
>  the galaxy. A rising Dark Tide, as there is currently, results in an
>  increase in the strange and unexplainable all over the world, but
>  especially around mysterious subterranean phenomena known as "dark
>  matter gateways", things that, when the Dark Tide is high enough to
>  activate them, are the nexus for all kinds of strange phenomena.
>
>    The player characters in the setting are assumed to be members of the
>  Hoffmann Institute, a private agency run by a man named Itohiro Nakami
>  and tasked with researching, understanding, and combating threats to
>  humankind caused by the rising Dark Tide. Think of them as being kind of
>  like the "X-Files", but not working for the government, and with nowhere
>  near the budget. The four Hoffmann Institute agents seen here are four
>  of the six sample characters provided for the introductory adventure at
>  the front of the book, "Exit 23", in which a random group of people are
>  trapped at an Idaho truck stop in the midst of a hellish snowstorm and
>  are besieged by a mysterious ice-demon.
>
>    Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, and the DARK.MATTER
>  setting was written by Wolfgang Baur and Monte Cook. I own neither of
>  these things, and expect that if either of those last two people Google
>  their own names they are going to be incredibly confused.

Alright.

>    "I take it you are the people sent from the Institute?" said the
>  thin, nervous looking Japanese man as he pulled open the sliding glass
>  door.

said -- asked (but you could move this to just after 'Japanese man', I think)

>    "You'd be correct. Doctor Phillip Akens, Hoffmann Institute." He was
>  a tall, dignified-looking African-American, around forty, his hair just
>  starting to grey at the edges. He extended an opened hand, which the
>  Japanese man stared at for a few seconds before Akens retracted it with
>  a nervous cough. "These are my colleagues, Doctor Nadine Neary, Doctor
>  Donna Truitt, and Mister William Wheeler." He gestured behind him and
>  pointed to, in turn, a small, slender woman of mixed Asian descent with
>  an unfocused, genial smile, a taller woman with long, dark hair and a
>  tank top to show off her well-toned arms, and a broad-shouldered man
>  with unkempt shoulder-length red hair, camo-patterned pants, and a
>  jacket that went down to his knees.

grey -- gray

>    The Japanese man bowed. "Doctor Akito. I thank you for coming on such
>  short notice, and only wish we could have met under better
>  circumstances." He ushered the four foreigners through the door, then
>  slid it shut and locked it behind them. "I have heard of your expertise
>  in these matters -- I trust you will be able to deal with this situation
>  quickly and quietly?"

This sounds promising.

>    Akito opened the door and winced at the sight within. Akens' eyebrow
>  arched, Neary looked queasy, and Wheeler let out a slow whistle. The
>  office was a shambles; papers and lab equipment lay strewn all over. The
>  doctor's large oaken desk had been overturned and splintered in several
>  places. Most notably, what appeared to be Dr. Otoyo hung upside-down
>  from the ceiling, covered in electrical burns, his legs below the knee
>  fused into the plaster above them with no visible means of entry.
>
>
>    "Doctor Akito, you've come to the right people."

I like this.  Like a classic x-files-esque sci-fi movie opening.

>    Another sigh. "Anyway," Akens continued, "We give it another ten
>  minutes or so in here, convince him we're touching all the bases. Then
>  we can get down to the real business." He paused, flipping back and
>  forth between a few pages. "No wonder he had to pull an allnighter, this
>  guy had no control over his department. Labs cancelled, tests lost,
>  professors missing, had to be a lot of work if he's doing the work of
>  six or more professors by himself. Hell, he's got a Doctor Tomoe here
>  who hasn't shown up in over two weeks -- that's two weeks worth of three
>  classes a week, labs to run, papers to grade, equipment to schedule..."

allnighter -- all-nighter
cancelled -- canceled

>    Dr. Tomoe did summon such a creature, a being of warped, insane
>  energy straddling between our world and theirs, but this was not his
>  intention. Indeed, he's not even aware that it arrived in our world at
>  all via the open portal he was using to test for the arrival of Pharaoh
>  90. The Fader simply saw a gate to our world, took it, and traveled
>  toward the nearest source of energy it could find. Luckily for Dr. Tomoe
>  and unluckily for us, he was not testing the gateway in his own backyard
>  or the monster would have fed on the equipment in his basement; instead
>  the closest source was the cyclotron at Tokyo University.

"straddling between" seems to be missing something to me, like
"straddling the barrier between", maybe?

>    And they're right, but they're not the only ones who would try.

Interesting.

>    Glancing from mirror to mirror and back again, Dr. Neary backed a
>  Hertz rental van into the driveway of the missing doctor's rather
>  impressive two-story home. Nobody expects any trouble -- they don't
>  expect to meet anybody, as a matter of fact -- but she's learned the
>  hard way to always, always park for a quick getaway.

Did we lose control of tenses here briefly?

>    Truitt rolled her eyes in the seat next to him. "Yes, I'm sure his
>  daughter would be so much more easily amused if you had a shooting iron
>  to show her. I know I ask this a lot, Bill, but just what the hell is
>  wrong with your brain?" Wheeler shot her a scowl set on 'vaporize'.

Wheeler's reaction, while not speech, could be moved to a separate
paragraph (this is not required by any means).

>    Truitt shoved him aside with a hand curled around a locksmith's pick
>  set. "--Get the door? Why gee, I hadn't thought of that. It isn't like
>  it's my job or anything." She knelt over and glanced at the doorknob,
>  selected a pick from the fold-out set, and started to line it up with
>  the keyhole before she stopped and just turned the doorknob. Met with no
>  resistance, the front doors of the Tomoe residence swung open.

Akens: "I could have done that."

>    And at Dr. Neary's suggestion, they split up. They would remain split
>  up for no more than twenty-five seconds, which is how long it took for
>  Donna Truitt to go into the basement and find the lab. Once she did, it
>  was pretty clear that nothing else in the house was going to matter.

Yeah ... I could see that.

>    Wheeler sniffed the contents of the flask he was holding and
>  grimaced. "Oh, you mean the movies, like the ones where crazy mad
>  scientists have labs in their basements with those little widgets that
>  look like rabbit ears with bolts of lightning zapping up them?"
>
>    Akens would have greatly loved to have a withering put-down to
>  respond to this, but damn if Bill wasn't right.

Heh.

>    Upstairs, a black magic woman breathes a sigh of relief as she sees
>  the four strangers walking back out to the car, carrying Dr. Tomoe's
>  computer and several components of the lab. She was afraid that they
>  might be some as-yet-unknown allies of the Sailor Senshi, but luckily
>  they were just there to rob the place. They left behind the daimon
>  incubator, by far the most valuable piece of equipment, and nothing they
>  did take didn't already have four or five backups at the Mugen site.

Tenses again, here.  Present to past.

>    When Kaolinite captured the girl and secured her pure heart for the
>  Pharaoh, it would be clear to all who was the greatest servant the
>  Pharaoh had. And it would especially be clear to that bitch Cyprine, who
>  was going to be demoted to rinsing out the centrifuge so fast it would
>  make her head spin.

ZIING.  Bad pun.

>    "God DAMN it will you jackasses just let me TURN, or am I going to
>  sithere with my blinker on until I die of old age?" Donna slammed the
>  base of her palm on the steering wheel in frustration. "You don't get a
>  prize for 'winning' at traffic, so it's okay if you let someone in front
>  of you once in a while!" She paused. "I'm sorry, you were saying
>  something that I wasn't at all interested in?"

sithere -- sit here

>    "If? Well, what do you mean, if?"

Those 'if's could have single-quotes around them, as they're quotes from Akens.

>    Chibi-Usa stopped when she heard a car horn, not so much startled as
>  confused. She looked around and realized she was in the middle of the
>  street, blocking the path of the van that was now honking at her. The
>  driver was a dark-haired woman, American or European, and she was
>  screaming loudly and animatedly in a language Chibi-Usa didn't
>  understand. She looked at the woman, shouting and waving her arms, for a
>  long and morose moment. She was so angry, impatient. She was probably
>  unhappy too. Did this screaming woman have friends when she was young,
>  people to show her the goodness of the world? Chibi-Usa didn't think so,
>  and when she walked away from the van the thought of it almost made her
>  cry. People deserve to be better than that. Hotaru deserves to be better
>  than that.

...I think that it would just piss Donna off to know what was going
through Chibi-Usa's head right then.

>    Daniel Banks, the engineer to which Dr. Akens had earlier referred,
>  was not joking. But this time, his coin flip had resulted in another
>  month of payment to the phone company; any deviations in this tangent
>  ultimately can be attributed to the results of this coin flip. It is why
>  all night and into the early morning of February 17th, 1995, as the
>  dwindling remains of a cabal of sorcerers in the Mugen Academy for
>  Gifted Students work the mechanism of Armageddon, as eight Senshi
>  struggle to halt its great turning gears, four underpaid agents are
>  sitting in a circle on the floor of the office of Dr. Mitsumo Akito,
>  surrounded by various electronic parts and components, one of them
>  alternating betweenlistening intently to the phone cradled between his
>  ear and shoulder, tapping something into the keyboard of a beige
>  Hewlett-Packard laying on the floor next to him, and shouting commands
>  to a loose assortment of undergraduates to fetch for him the next part
>  he will need. Four undergraduates are missing, not that anyone notices,
>  and those would be the four of Dr. Akito's students that had taken part-
>  time tutoring jobs at the downtown Mugen Academy. When morning came, the
>  rest of the students found the entire building closed off by order of
>  the department chair.

betweenlistening -- between listening

>    The long-distance bill alone from this night will be over one
>  thousand American dollars, not to mention the costs of rescheduling a
>  day's worth of classes. The Hoffmann Institute will never see an invoice
>  for this, because every party involved is about to have much bigger
>  problems.

I get the feeling the Hoffmann Institute would not pay this invoice,
regardless.  <_<

>    "It's a rotating magnetic resonance disruptor. It cycles magentic
>  fields on a certain frequency, attuned to the dimension the Faders are
>  from. If Dr. Tomoe's research was accurate, it'll force our Fader into
>  one dimension or another."

magentic -- magnetic

>    Akens shrugged. "Depends. If it is more in its dimension at the time,
>  it just gets driven back. It vanishes. If it's more in ours, it's forced
>  all the way in, and it should be unable to teleport or make use of the
>  energy it's been storing up."

'Should' being the operative word here.

>    "Phil, I don't know if you've noticed this, but generally when I
>  shoot things they aren't happy about it." He slid the gun back into its
>  holster, just so he could make a show of drawing it again. "So, I
>  noddedoff at about four, what time did you guys end up going to bed?"

noddedoff -- nodded off

>    In the backseat, Pluto stared off to the side, in silent
>  contemplation. Neptune and Uranus were willing to make the ultimate
>  sacrifice. So was she. But Usagi wasn't. No, Usagi had said "I won't let
>  anyone be sacrificed," and she said it with the same conviction that
>  they'd said they would die to stop the Silence. Neptune and Uranus think
>  that means she's weak, naive, foolishly optimistic. That she'd be dead
>  if not for cynical people like them willing to do ugly things so she can
>  keep herself pretty.

Tenses, again.  Or is that intentional?

>    Pluto can't help but wonder, though. Sailor Moon has already fought
>  the Dark Kingdom and the Black Moon Clan without the help of the Outer
>  Senshi and without sacrificing any of her friends. Is the Silence simply
>  a different threat, one that can't be fought the way Sailor Moon is
>  confortable with? Or would Neptune and Uranus have thought that the only
>  way to defeat Queen Beryl was to sacrifice themselves and leave nobody
>  to stop Wiseman? They say that Hotaru is the Messiah of Silence. Isn't
>  the Messiah supposed to bear off the burdens of others, so they no
>  longer need to make these sacrifices?

confortable -- comfortable

>    Uranus pulled in closer to land and saw that it was indeed not a
>  normal barrier, it was a barrier made of hundreds and hundreds of red,
>  gelatinous daimons. They had been dormant until the helicopter as in
>  range, and then a great mass of them attacked in unison, leaping at all
>  parts of the aircraft. They were each weak and had no weapons to speak
>  of but neither of that really mattered because they didn't have to
>  attack the three Senshi, they had to attack the far more fragile
>  aircraft they were riding in. Uranus tried to pull back, to get away,
>  but there was no time to escape the daimons. They wrapped aroudn the
>  craft like cords, pulling it in, breaking it to pieces, and showering it
>  with dark energy. Sparks and smoke shot from the intrument panel, the
>  rotors were jammed, the intakes were clogged, and the helicopter would
>  have exploded before it even finished falling like a stone. What Pluto
>  did next, she didn't even have time to think about, but after all the
>  consideration in the world she would have done it anyway.

aroudn -- around
intrument -- instrument

>    "You're sure it's coming."
>
>
>    "Positive. It feeds like clockwork, every five days. According to the
>  power usage logs, yhe feeding times get a few hours later each time, so
>  it should be here around eight, eight-thirty. Unless it's moved on, and
>  there's no reason for it to have done so, it'll be here this morning."

yhe -- the

>    "Well, there's 26 letters in the English language, you can't just
>  make me lose after six wr--"

Heh.

>    Truitt jammed a hand over Wheeler's mouth and pointed a finger up in
>  the air. He began to protest, but then he heard it too, the sound she
>  was indicating. A low buzz, a hum, permeated by the occasional
>  crackling. Quiet, but getting louder. The flourescent lights in the
>  office started to flicker to life, even though they were turned off.

flourescent -- fluorescent

>    He peered down into the hallway and spied a bluish glow coming down
>  another hall toward the cyclotron room. In a few seconds, he saw its
>  source: a man, or what appeared to be one, faintly luminescent, dressed
>  exactly like a Naval crewman, of the USS Eldridge on October 28, 1943 --
>  though his plane of origin was nothing so mundane as that. It moved with
>  a quick, determined gait toward the cyclotron.

That's pretty DARK*MATTER textbook, as I understand it.

>    I HAVE BEEN CALLED COUNTLESS NAMES IN THE LIFE OF YOUR PLANET. YOUR
>  FATHER CALLED ME PHARAOH. THE FRAAL CALLED ME THE SILENT ONE, ISCI BA
>  FAN. I HAVE CARED LITTLE FOR THE TITLES GIVEN BY MORTALS. BUT NOW, I
>  SHALL REVEAL MY IDENTITY TO YOUR SPECIES.
>
>    MY NAME IS DEATH.

Well done intro.

>    The Fader stopped next to the locked door to the cyclotron, and arcs
>  of blue-white lightning began leaping through it, into his body. The
>  flourescent lights all over the hallway began flaring and sparking.
>  Behind them, they heard a muffled voice say, "I am the only one who can
>  save this world from the Silent One. Just leave the rest to me."

flourescent -- fluorescent


>    Sailor Saturn struck, slashed, parried with her Silence Glaive at
>  dizzying speed. The weapon was almost weightless, incredibly easy to
>  wield and control. Though it weighed no more than gossamer, the blade
>  was rigid, unbreakable, and the edge sharp enough to cut anything with
>  the slightest pressure. She twirled and swept around with it, stopping
>  attacks that were coming at her almost too fast to see, hacking off
>  little chunks of tentacle that evaporated into black mist before they
>  hit the ground. She was, in truth, actually a bit suprised at how
>  skilled she was with this weapon; she was thankful that it was Sailor
>  Saturn whom the fate of the world rested on, because Tomoe Hotaru would
>  have failed everyone by now.

suprised -- surprised

>    This time, everyone heard it, though only Dr. Akens and Dr. Neary
>  could understand the Japanese in which it was spoken. "Moon crisis make
>  up!" howled a disembodied voice, "Moon Crisis Make Up! MOON CRISIS MAKE
>  UP!" with each repetition becoming more desperate and hoarse.

Aren't their transformation phrases and attacks actually in English,
though?  Or would that have been too much...?

>    "That's it! The DEVICE!" William shouted in a moment of revalation,
>  and yanked the device away from its wall socket.
>
>    Donna realized what he was doing and dove to stop him, but was too
>  slow, and she only got as far as "What are you doing you id--" before
>  Wheeler threw the rotating magnetic resonance disruptor at the
>  creature's head.

Hmm.  If the Fader powers it, I suppose it doesn't even need to be plugged in.

>    Lying next to her, unconscious, in the middle of a pile of debris
>  that seemed to indicate she'd been thrown bodily into the wall behind
>  her, was a small, frail little Japanese girl. Her plain black shirt was
>  tattered, revealing all manner of cuts and abrasions underneath, blood
>  was oozing down her face, and both her hands were locked in a death-grip
>  on a long, wicked polearm that still held a perfect mirror sheen even as
>  everything around it was coated in a film of plaster dust.

Alrighty.  Looks solid, so far, other than some spelling mistakes.
I'll try and get to the next chapter shortly, and sorry for the delay
in getting this C&C to you.


>  HISTORY: William Wheeler joined the US Army directly after his
>  graduation from high school in Moscow, Idaho. He served a four year tour
>  of duty, three months of which was combat duty as part of UN
>  peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, and declined to re-enlist. Upon
>  his return home he found that his father's farm had been siezed by the
>  IRS for nonpayment of taxes, and this caused William to believe the
>  government was out to harm its citizens. He joined a fringe militia
>  group called the "New Patriot Church of Liberty", and stockpiled weapons
>  as he preached to his neighbors about the imminent peril the government
>  had placed them in.

siezed -- seized

Is this from the DARK*MATTER books?

>  Mr. Wheeler joined the Institute after being involved in an October 1992
>  incident that concerned the summoning of an ice-demon at a rural Idaho
>  truck stop, where he was distributing antigovernment leaflets.

antigovernment -- anti-government

>  William exhibits a fascination with firearms of all types that in any
>  other occupation would be disturbing and unhealthy but here may be the
>  most sensible habit of any of his teammates. When informed that, of the
>  many conspiracies existing within the US government, the IRS was exactly
>  as it claimed to be and had no plans to spirit away tax dissenters in
>  the night or to sell citizens' true names to foreign banks, he was
>  actually a bit disappointed.

More than a bit, I expect. :p

>  Rebellious      [+2]: William does not trust government or police
>  officials in any capacity and recieves a +2 step penalty to any PER-
>  based skill checks involving governmental agents. He has no problem with
>  authority figures that are not associated with the government, or
>  pretending to be one himself, he has even posed as an FBI agent using a
>  novelty badge purchased at a Spencer Gifts.

Heh!

>  Combat Information:
>  Weapon:       Score:         Range:    Damage (O/G/A): Type:
>  Unarmed       12/6/3       Personal  d4+1s/d4+2s/d4+3s LI/O
>  .357 Revolver 13/6/3        6/12/50  d4+1w/d4+2w/d4+1m HI/O
>  Mosin-Nagant  14/7/3 -2 200/400/800 d6+1w/2d4+1w/d4+1m HI/O
>  M16           14/7/3 -1  60/120/300  d4+2w/d6+3w/d4+1m HI/O
>  RPG-7         12/6/3 +1   30/60/150      d6w/d4+3w/d4m En/G

I now have to hope that you give him an RPG at some point in this story.

-- 
Brian Randall
--
I write fanfiction. Too much of it. You can read it here, thanks to a
kind grant from the Larry F foundation:
http://www.florestica.com/brandall/
--
Together. Allegiance or death. BIGFIRE!
--
Haiku of my lament:

Forgive my spelling,
my U.S. education,
is the source of blame.