[FFML] [Sailor Moon] Double Exposure 6 [Dark/Comedy]

[Brian Randall]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 3:18 PM, Paul Durant <031537 at comcast.net> wrote:
>    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.

Vastly overdue, but trying to catch up a bit.  o_o

>    "She's still a kid," said Michiru. Her hair was matted and lopsided
>  and she was trying not to notice it until she could get back home and
>  in her own bathroom. "She doesn't want to acknowledge that she can't
>  save everyone all the time. And we don't have to trust her fully, but
>  there's no reason we can't make use of her as a resource."  She
>  stopped to roll her neck back and forth and hear the bones crackle.
>  "As long as we don't give her the opportunity to do something idiotic
>  like that again, anyway."

I thought Michiru wasn't as much of a hard-case as Haruka.  o_o

>    Haruka sighed, shifted her weight from her tiptoes to her heels and
>  back. "I know, I know. It's just something about her makes me want to
>  punch her, you know? That way she acts like, like 'of course the
>  easiest answer to arrive at is the correct one! I'd rather everyone on
>  Earth be killed than me have to compromise my middle-school vision of
>  morality!' And then we're the bad guys for not having our heads off in
>  the clouds."

Ah, idealism.

>    "You haven't guessed?" Michiru half-smiled. "The answers are time
>  travel, time travel, and..." she spread her fingers out and waved them
>  back and forth, "...maaagic!"

Yeah, it tends to work better when you don't think about it.

>    "Because that would be like defacing a national treasure."

Hah!

>    Haruka patted the radiator like it was an infant to be consoled.
>  "There there, baby. Don't listen to her. She's just jealous."

*snrk*

>    Nadine pulled the pillow out from underneath her head and threw it
>  at Itohiro Nakami's head, he swatted it away easily. "Good freaking
>  morning to you too, Nakami!"

The first comma could be replaced with a semi-colon.  If not, I think
something needs to be added after the comma (like a 'but').

>    Nakami let out an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, I heard him! What the
>  Hell have you people been doing down here, people are saying there's
>  attacks going on, some kind of sickness that makes people crazy,
>  terrorists or monsters or terrorist monsters, they almost diverted my
>  flight to Okinawa! And what is up with all these lights?"

Comment from friend while watching Kill Bill in theaters: "You can't
get a direct international flight to Okinawa!"

>    Nakami looked to Nadine like he was going to say something else,
>  but thought better of it. Hotaru doesn't know how to read alien body
>  language. "Tomoe Hotaru, the girl... is she safe?"

'doesn't' -- 'didn't' (tenses)

That sentence also seems somehow incomplete.  Not sure why.

>    Bill rose his finger in the air but didn't get up. "You listen to
>  nothing but Vivaldi and yet you've never insulted another person's
>  taste in music." He let his hand drop to his chest. "Human beings
>  don't act like that."

'rose his finger' doesn't seem right to me.  'raised', maybe?

>    Hotaru almost asked 'What do you need my help for?' even though she
>  was fully aware of the answer, old habits die hard.

I would replace this last comma with a semi-colon, as well.

>    Mizuno Ami is the first one to extoll the virtues of school
>  attendance but even she wonders if this is a little much. They'd
>  skipped school on Thursday, because if they didn't the Silence would
>  have come and killed them all. And now as far as they were aware it
>  was still coming, and here she was sitting in science class. There
>  wasn't a whole lot they could do today -- their only lead was in the
>  subway tunnels and that had to wait until late at night when less
>  trains were running so they could explore them. Nobody knew where to
>  find fake FBI agents, and the two previous sites of Death Buster
>  activity were as picked over as a skeleton in the desert. Still, even
>  if they couldn't actively do anything today, maybe they should have
>  been getting some sleep so they could do something tonight. Too late
>  to change their minds now, though.

extoll -- extol

>    "Saturn is composed primarily of hydrogen gas, though its core is
>  solid material. The rings, made of fine particles of ice and rock,
>  were discovered in the 1600 by astronomer Galileo Galilei but were
>  thought to be solid sheets of material until 1859, when James Clerk
>  Maxwell mathematically proved that solid rings that size would tear
>  themselves apart..." Saturn's rings can tear you apart, too, in fact
>  they can tear the entire Earth apart if they have to, but they only
>  will if the Earth goes bad. Saturn's core is a tiny thirteen-year-old
>  rock now, but its core used to be a nasty little ball of what those in
>  the know call 'ankoku busshitsu' named the Mistress Nine, which is
>  appropriate because the next place it took over was Pluto, the ninth
>  planet in the solar system. Johannes Kepler was the first to observe
>  the girl in the castle on Saturn who's all alone because everyone's
>  afraid of her, which he named with some German word that probably has
>  forty syllables like 'Das Gleckenshurg... eimen...
>  effenfraumenlibzit... wersterschaur... aurutauru... hotaru... hotaru-
>  hotaru-bo-baru-banana-fanna-fo-faru-me-mi-mo-maru'...

O_o

>    Ami's head snapped upward, her eyes went wide, and she half-shouted
>  "Nine point five-eight astronomical units!"

That's Saturn's distance from the sun?

>    "Okay, that's..." the teacher paused, looking off to the side as he
>  tried to recall a fact from the depths of his memory, "...the orbital
>  length of... Saturn, I think? But the question was 'who succeeded
>  Leonid Brezhnev for control of the USSR?'"

Sweet.  I'm a total nerd.

...oh, wait. >_<

>    Ami nodded and started to go back inside to get her things, but the
>  teacher stopped her. "Oh, and one more thing. Don't wake up Tsukino-
>  san and Aino-san while you're in there, because as soon as they wake
>  up on their own I am going to send them out here to carry buckets full
>  of water."

Makoto: Evaded!

Though, her condition is ample justification.

>    The man in black laughed. "Oh, Ami-chan. Ami-chan, Ami-chan, Ami-
>  chan. We here at the 'FBI' don't care whether or not you're going to
>  school. We care when you start hanging around with people like miss
>  Donna... KIMberly... Truitt... that you have no business hanging
>  around with. Those Hoffmann Institute people are bad news and if you
>  don't think we know something about bad news you're going to be
>  sorely, sorely mistaken."

I like the ... RANdom ... seeming emphasis on her middle name.

Will need to remember that trick for later.

>    The man in black opened up some drawers in the desk and didn't look
>  inside them. "Oh no, it looks like we're all out of tummy medicine!
>  Why don't you just lay down and be very very quiet and then wish your
>  tummyache away." The kid sniffled as if he was about to cry, and the
>  man in black growled his frustration and hastily followed it up with,
>  "Or, how about I have some lollipops here, would six or seven of those
>  quiet you up?"

Mind-powers negate remembering the need for people-skills, it seems.

>    "Isn't it obvious? I'm one of those Men in Black you hear so much
>  about." He smiled, wide, insincere. "And after I told you to stay away
>  from the Hoffmann Institute, there's just one other thing I wanted to
>  ask you for now. Do you think the planet Mercury ever had an
>  atmosphere that could support life?"

Hum.  I wonder what the MiBs have as far as interest in the planet Mercury.

>    Hotaru stopped and thought, and felt a bit embarrassed. She'd
>  already known about this stuff, somewhat, without anyone having to
>  tell her and for a moment she'd assumed everyone else would too. She
>  wondered if she was going crazy, the answer was probably yes. "I
>  inherited them... but it isn't genetic, I don't think. There used to
>  be a kingdom called the Silver Millennium, long long ago, and it
>  spanned all across the solar system."

crazy, the answer -- I'd replace that comma with a semi-colon, too.

>    "You're telling me. Were you and Mamoru sexy physicists again?"
>
>
>    "No, no, sexy spaceship captain this time."

...'kay.  O_o

She's got a healthy imagination!

>    Donna felt remarkably good considering the fact she got shot last
>  night. Better than before she got shot, really. Sure, she was sore,
>  she couldn't bend over and she had to bite her lip to keep herself
>  from yelping if someone poked her in the stomach, but that wasn't too
>  bad considering. Hotaru's magic healing hands didn't bring her back to
>  full health but they'd certainly put her well on her way towards it.
>  And the pain left over was more than cancelled out by the fact she'd
>  actually taken a shower and shaved her legs today and wasn't wearing
>  clothes she'd had on since Wednesday. She was wearing some of Bill's
>  clothes, some faded and torn blue jeans and black T-shirt with an
>  angry eagle and the phrase "DON'T TREAD ON ME" silkscreened on the
>  front of it, both of which were too big for her, but at least these
>  clothes were clean.

cancelled  -- canceled

>    Phil and Nakami had told them to go "do some recon" and not said
>  where or how they were supposed to do it when neither one of them
>  spoke Japanese. It was obvious they meant "We want you two to go away
>  because we want to talk to Hotaru without you bickering with each
>  other", but as long as they didn't actually say it, Donna could
>  pretend they didn't mean it and keep her dignity intact. Bill and her
>  wandered around on foot for a little while until they found the
>  arcade, which seemed a good a place as any to do fake recon.

they meant "We want -- they meant, "We want

>    "I'd bring the game, if the stupid game would... rrrgh... let me
>  get up... or do SOMETHING!"
>
>
>    "Sonic BOOM! Player 2 wins! PERFECT!"

This reminds me of trying to play SNK vs. CAPCOM with Walker and Jim....

Jim: "Were you trying to do a move there, Brian?"
Brian: "Yes, Jim.  I was trying to do moves like PUNCHES and KICKS."

>    Donna shook her head. "Bill, don't you get it? This is Tokyo.
>  People don't just 'steal' cars in Tokyo."
>
>
>    "You just 'steal' cars in Tokyo."

Yep.

>    She started to reach for her pocket and then paused. She'd never
>  see any of these people again and her respiratory problems weren't
>  exactly a CIA-protected state secret, but for some reason she didn't
>  feel like she should pull out an inhaler and start puffing away while
>  total strangers were watching. That was something fat kids did in gym
>  class. With a few surreptitious glances around, and walked her way
>  over to an alley by the arcade and ducked into it. That's be better.
>  Not that she had anything to be ashamed of, of course, but, you
>  know... people watching... better to just avoid it.

that's be -- that'd

>    She pulled the inhaler out of her pocket and heard something else
>  fall to the floor, almost inaudible. She patted her pocket, realized
>  what it was , and turned to grab it but it had bounced into a pile of
>  trash. She muttered and crouched downward to look for it, wincing.
>  Ordinarily she wouldn't, but it was her magnetic card scrambler, the
>  one from the CIA that opened any electronic lock with a keycard
>  reader. Not only was it an invaluable asset she couldn't replace, but
>  it was the single most badass super-spy leather catsuit blow-
>  cigarette-smoke-on-the-laser-tripwires femme fatale 'steal the
>  McGuffin from the two male leads right under their noses at the end of
>  the movie' piece of equipment she had. She loved that damn thing, more
>  than several members of her family.

This does not bode well.

>    A second later, her assailant emerged. She was the same body type
>  as the woman on the sidewalk, and had the same long black hair, but
>  her skin was pink instead of white, her ears pointed, her mouth
>  fanged, and of course on her left shoulder there was a black five-
>  pointed star. She wore tight black leather pants and a skintight black
>  tank top that showed off her sculpted-but-not-chiseled abs. Wrapped
>  around her shoulder was a length of rope and a grappling hook, and
>  from her right fingertips up to her neck there stretched a thick,
>  featureless black line. On her forehead was a pair of what appeared to
>  be night-vision goggles. She was looking at the woman on the floor,
>  shaking her head, circling around her. It was clearly a daimon, but
>  one of the older models, made out of a target's treasured possession
>  instead of something that was dangerous, only five or so feet tall and
>  walking like it wasn't running a bad program. Already people started
>  fleeing from the sight of her.

floor -- ground (this is outside, yes?)

>    The daimon's head snapped to face them and she snarled, her
>  expression angry and also afraid. "What, so you think you can just
>  JUDGE me now?" she said with the hint of an English-speaker's accent,
>  "All of a sudden you're freaking BETTER than me? Who the Hell are you?
>  You're nobody, that's who!"

Interesting.

>    Nadine knew it was inappropriate and they didn't know each other
>  that well but God damn after Hotaru had said her inescapable purpose
>  was mass murder Nadine thought she needed a hug. She kneeled down to
>  where Hotaru was sitting, hesitated a moment, then wrapped her arms
>  around the young girl's shoulders. Hotaru didn't push her away but she
>  didn't return the embrace either, just waited for her to let go. After
>  a few moments of clutching her and gently patting her on the back, she
>  did.

kneeled -- knelt (?)

>    "He immediately attacked the crew of the Fraal motherships and set
>  about using them to see if he could find a way to get all the way back
>  in our reality. The Fraal couldn't stop him. He had no physical form
>  to damage or restrain. He swatted aside the mental attacks of every
>  single Fraal telepath on the ship with ease. Destroy his host, and he
>  moved to another one. He could only directly posess one at a time, but
>  some people think he may have been able to shear off tiny pieces of
>  himself to act as independent, though far less powerful, entities. It
>  still took many of us to destroy each one of these shards, but he
>  didn't seem to make too many. Eventually they thought he was so
>  dangerous and so resilient that the only way to kill him was to
>  overload the dark fusion reactor on the ship he was occupying. It
>  exploded with hundreds of gigatons of force, it killed everyone on
>  board..."

posess  -- possess

>    "Our only solace is how little he likes to actually posess the
>  minds of living things -- we are so far beneath him he thinks it
>  defiles him. That's why we think he uses others, has them work to
>  bring him into the world. He appears to be immortal and would rather
>  spend centuries waiting than touch our minds any more than he has to."

posess  -- possess (again)

>    Nakami shook his head. "I suppose if I say I'm Japanese I should
>  learn more about the language than I do." He sighed, though Hotaru
>  couldn't see where his nostrils were.

than I do. -- than I have.

>    The pink-skinned daimon rolled her head from side to side, cracking
>  her neck. She had her legs spread, one in front of the other, and
>  hopped lightly from foot to foot like a boxer preparing for the bell.
>  "So how about if you think you're such hot shit you put your magic
>  where your mouth is, huh? Any of you still wanna prove you're better
>  than U-Kigumoko?"
>
>
>    Only Mercury got that reference, and she didn't get it until later.

Well, I don't get it at all; I anticipate an explanation to be forthcoming.

>    Mercury and Venus broke formation and spread out to the street and
>  opposite sidewalk; the people around them were running off and
>  screaming until they got about three blocks away and then acting as if
>  nothing was out of the ordinary, cars were diverting out of their
>  paths before they passed in front of the Crown arcade. Mercury might
>  be able to see how far they went, if everyone was out of danger, but
>  her visor was now showing nothing but static. She knew there were at
>  least two people still here -- the dark-haired woman was trying to
>  bring her ankle to her hand without leaning forward or sitting up, but
>  making no effort to run, and for a moment she saw a red-haired man
>  with an unkempt beard and a dark green Army surplus jacked duck his
>  head out of the Crown, curse, and duck back in. He matched the
>  description they had of one of the 'FBI' agents who had Hotaru, this
>  could be no coincidence.

Hotaru, this -- Hotaru; this

>    Mars took a step back and started to move her hands to invoke
>  another attack, but she couldn't even get a syllable of the invocation
>  out before U-Kigumoko jumped at her, arm outstretched, and slammed her
>  palm into Mars's face. The daimon tried to  push Mars downward and
>  pie-face her into the asphalt but Mars regained her senses too
>  quickly, grabbing the daimon's arm and yanking it towards her to fling
>  her out of the daimon's grip. She hit the street facedown, Mars
>  stumbled and broke a heel when her feet hit the ground but after a few
>  steps she managed to hold her footing. The daimon was starting to roll
>  to her feet before she even finished falling, getting ready to kick
>  herself back off the street, shouting "You must think you're some
>  pretty hot shit, huh? You keep laughing, because I'm going to stuff
>  you in a mailbox!"

facedown -- face down

shouting "You -- shouting, "You

>    She seemed surprised and displeased when the attack just caused
>  Moon to fall backwards a few steps instead of, presumably, flying back
>  a few blocks and tearing out a furrow in the street. Not wanting to
>  stand there and get shot, the daimon stepped forward to grab Moon's
>  wrist and twist it behind her back in a hammerlock. She probably would
>  have started mocking them again too, now that she had a human shield
>  in front of her, but as she opened her mouth she was cut off by the
>  distinctive noise of a long-stemmed rose becoming embedded in
>  concrete. Everyone present traced the flower's path back to its point
>  of origin and saw Tuxedo Kamen standing atop a building, cape
>  billowing in the wind, looking incredibly heroic and majestic.

Freaking speed 12 characters in a speed-2 battle.

>    "Not any more," said a voice from right behind Venus's ear. She
>  yelped, stepped forward, spun around and saw the red-headed man
>  loading the last bullet into his revolver as if nothing was unusual.
>  "We're going to say NSA from now on, because apparently FBI is taken."
>  He nodded his head toward Moon and the others. "So you're all Sailor
>  Something-or-others, I take it?"

Ami: "You can just change which part of the government you work for?
Just like that?"
Bill: "Well, we are American."
Ami: "...touché."

>    "It's Latin," said 'Bill,' as he spun the cylinder and snapped it
>  back into place. "it means 'Thus Always To Tyrants.' I think it's a
>  good slogan to have. And, you know, everyone's yelling out some phrase
>  before their attacks, and... I thought it looked fun, I wanted to try
>  it out."

place. "it means -- place. "It means

It's probably better than, "Bullet Attack!"

>    "Actually," corrected Venus, "The phrase is 'Sic Semper
>  Tyrannosaurus.'"

Venus, "The -- Venus, "the

>    She'd tried telling them why they wanted nothing to do with her and
>  they didn't care. They obviously didn't believe her, as if a magic
>  kingdom on the moon reincarnating its princesses as magical warriors
>  in modern-day Tokyo was totally plausible but one of them having the
>  power to destroy the world was just impossible. They never came out
>  and said it, but it was obvious. They told her they didn't care about
>  that, and they meant for her to take it as "We accept you for who you
>  are, now please say yes so we can leave," but in truth it was just
>  more "This thing would make me uncomfortable, so I pretend it doesn't
>  exist."

it as "We -- it as, "We
more "This -- more, "This

>    The hair on the back of Hotaru's neck stood up about half a second
>  before she saw a man's face reflected in the water, standing behind
>  her. He was a middle-aged man, the hair on his temples greying, the
>  skin of his cheeks craggy and pockmarked. He was wearing a blue
>  policeman's cap, and when he put his hand on Hotaru's shoulder she had
>  to bite her tongue to keep herself from screaming.

I do have to admit ... I think Hotaru's depression is overplayed for
someone who's not even fourteen years old.

>    She's not too good at eyeballing distances, but she figured that
>  tool shed she spotted, nestled in the trees out behind the shrine, was
>  about thirty meters from her starting point. There's no way she'd get
>  there with enough of a lead, no way she could get there at all. She
>  didn't dare look behind her, because she knew if she did she would see
>  the policeman running at her, less than a meter away. Or training his
>  gun on her head. Her breath was already labored, her footfalls heavy,
>  each step felt like it added another iron weight to her chest, and it
>  hurt to inhale, much less to speak. But speak she did, one word for
>  each breath. "Saturn... Planet... Po.... Power... Make..." She said
>  'Make' about five steps too early, and she wondered how far apart the
>  magic words could be. Without daring to look behind her she reached
>  the open door of the tool shed and the inviting darkness inside. She
>  took one step inside and tripped over a non-functioning leafblower
>  left on the ground, as she fell the last word of the incantation
>  escaped her lips as a hoarse whisper, "...up..."

She's not -- She was not
There's no --  There was no

>    Grumbling to himself about the horrible state of today's youth,
>  Officer Tadaka jogged down the path he'd seen the fleeing girl take.
>  Why couldn't she have just cooperated? The police had all the exits
>  covered, she had to know that, resisting arrest just makes it worse on
>  her. He ducked his head into the tool shed as he passed it and saw a
>  girl, perhaps 14 or 15, with violet hair and eyes and wearing an
>  ornate school uniform. It had to be the grand-daughter of the
>  shrinekeeper, Agent Statler had mentioned something about how he had a
>  granddaughter with dark purple hair who went to a private school with
>  its own hours and thus may or may not be at the shrine even on a
>  school day. Rei, that's what her name was.

makes it worse -- made it worse

>    "Don't mention it," Hotaru rasped. She held her breath until the
>  policeman had enough time to get a few meters away, then lapsed into a
>  coughing fit.

Clever.

>   > Decreased Ability: Of course, to power the hovering and orbiting,
>  the device needs to drain power from something. It reduces its user's
>  STR score by 1, because Senshi usually don't need to use physical
>  strength. And if they do, well, that's too bad.

Ouch.

Alright.  Hopefully more comments with less delay in the future. :)

-- 
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.