Silver Millennium Soldier
-5- Shades of Envy
by
Mike Macdonald
(Age: 27)
copyright 02-13-2006
Age Rating: 18 to 127
“Hope you slept well! At the movies. Will be back by dinner. –Mom”
“Don’t forget to study! –Dad”
“Serena is gay –Sammy”
Serena paid little mind to the yellow sticky note on the refrigerator door as she sniffed about the kitchen for something to eat. The microwave clock read 11:39, probably closer to most people’s lunchtime, when the phone rang. She’d barely said hello when she was slapped awake with a squeaky voice.
She wouldn’t have been so easily caught off guard, but it was understandable this particular morning. From the foot of her bed to the bottom of the stairs, and from there to the kitchen cupboard, her mind had been swimming in the image of a gold-laced ivory locket that sang the most depressing song in the world. She’d almost forgotten about reality altogether. Molly’s voice always had a way of pulling her back.
“Yeah, I know,” Serena said. “Remember my wonderful day yesterday?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I called you a bunch earlier ‘cos I’m out at the market, shopping. Wanted to know if you were gonna meet me at the arcade. But you never picked up, and I’m outside the boutique already.”
Serena shoved her way past milk jugs, pickle jars, and other various food items that didn’t belong on the same shelf together toward the back of the fridge, where she finally found the orange juice. Its light weight from lack of contents surprised her so that she knocked a mustard bottle over the edge, to its demise had it been glass.
“What, you’re all done?”
“No, I was about to go in, but I thought I’d give you one last- Hey! How’re you doing? Omigawd!”
Molly wasn’t known for multiple personality disorder, but on the phone in a public place she sounded like a textbook example.
“Molly?” Serena said, jamming the mustard back in its proper place on the door.
“No, I was just going in!” Molly said.
Serena again grabbed the orange juice and nearly had the same mishap with the milk.
“Molly, who’re you talking to?”
“Shut up!”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry, Serena, I’m talking to Rachel. She says hi.”
Serena rolled her eyes. She clearly heard her classmate shout this on the other end.
“Shut up! Are you serious?” Molly said. Then silence again.
Serena grumbled and took a swig straight from the orange juice carton while she waited. A full minute passed. She thought she heard lounge music and smelled fluoride for a second.
“Hey, Serena,” Molly finally said, “You better get down here soon! The jewelry store’s having a surplus sale!”
“Really? Awesome! Hey, see if you can get a hold of that bracelet for me, ‘kay? I’ll be there in-?”
Silence again.
“Molly?”
A giggle. “I am not a materialistic ho!”
Serena groaned as she propped the phone between her ear and shoulder to free her other hand for seizing a bagel from the breadbox. She could vaguely hear her friend on the other line giggling and squealing with Rachel like she wasn’t on the phone at all, as she was prone to do every time she called.
She set the orange juice carton on the kitchen counter, where she locked eyes with a peculiar black cat perched as if on its own sofa, watching her expectantly. An exquisite piece of jewelry sat on the counter less than a foot from its front paws.
Serena dropped the bagel and the telephone and stumbled back against the refrigerator, staring at what she hoped was an apparition, flattening herself as though standing on the ledge of a tall building.
“Sorry, Serena,” the phone said. “So, you gonna come by?”
Serena snatched the phone up immediately.
“Uh, I gotta go, Molly. I’ll talk to you, uh…I gotta go!”
She hung up and placed the phone back in its cradle before addressing the animal, eyes solid as granite and shivering in confusion, brow furrowed until no skin was left on her face to donate, spine arched slightly forward, right arm cranked painfully into the aggressive jutting prow of a ship at ramming speed, lips forming the word perfectly.
“No.”
The cat didn’t seem to hear her.
“There’s trouble,” she said, “Artemis has informed me of another sudden outburst of malice in the city. He’s pinpointed one source.”
“Well, tell Artemis to get bent. What is he, a dog?”
“No, he’s a cat as well. And I would appreciate a little cooperation.”
Serena brushed off her bagel and tossed it exasperatedly on the counter next to the brooch, which kept staring at her just like the cat.
“Look, what do you want from me? I’m a high schooler! I have a busy agenda as it is, being swamped with homework, and getting scolded by adults, and flirting with boys, and washing my hair!”
“Take the locket and put it on,” Luna said. There was, indeed, a hint of urgency in her voice.
“Why do I have to-?”
“Just do it, you stupid girl! I refuse to debate this! Just do as I say!”
She was taken aback by the cat’s sudden outburst. She really was serious.
With a frown, Serena half-heartedly picked up the brooch and eyed it once again, looking back into the reddish pupil at its center, into the eyes of her own reflection, behind which (and she thought herself crazy for seeing this) the Sylvan towers stood as vigilantly as a team of soldiers, their spirit exhausted, pleading for her help. Her own reflection seemed to share the sentiment.
Well, it was a pretty locket. It wouldn’t be so bad wearing it for a day. She pinned it to her pajamas over the center of her chest. It was impossibly light.
“How do I look?” she said, posing foolishly.
And for several seconds, she was completely blind. She began to think the sun had torn the roof off and was now smiling right in her face, or a nuclear bomb had gone off next door, and just when she realized the brilliant flash had come from the brooch she was wearing she could suddenly see again and found her kitchen was still intact. Her disorientation quickly passed, though not fast enough to prevent her from knocking her head against the corner of the refrigerator door.
Serena eyed the cat again, rubbing her head, resentful of the way it was beaming at her.
Then she looked back at the locket and jumped with a gasp.
“You look marvelous,” Luna replied.
Serena’s pajamas no longer existed. In their stead was a milky white garment similar in design to a one-piece bathing suit except fashioned out of an otherworldly fabric that felt like a combination of silk and resin. The material glistened with a metallic shine, but it was so light and soft it couldn’t possibly be metal. It all seemed to have come out from under the brooch, the only part of her original outfit that remained, which now had several strings of pearls sprouting from either side and lacing across her breasts and shoulders. These threads supported a lovely royal blue velvet sash that draped across her back. Another, larger cloth of the same make wrapped around her waist into a sarong fit for a Roman gladiator.
Her hands were adorned with gauntlets of the same bizarre fabric as her bodysuit, though the elbows, knuckles, and fingers were protected by grooved steel plates for the purpose, she guessed, of cracking bone and rending flesh in a scuffle, or discouraging one altogether. A set of knee-high boots on her feet matched these devious gloves perfectly.
Her neck was enclosed in a silver, gem-studded choker her girlfriends at school would have killed for. And resting upon her forehead was a matching tiara, laced with diamond threads and proudly bearing the same purple stone as the locket on her chest.
It was the most hideous thing she’d ever worn.
“What in the world of Fashion Don’ts is this?” she wailed.
“That is your Silver Millennium Soldier uniform,” the cat replied matter-of-factly. “As I expected, the locket recognized you. You can don that armor at will so long as you wear it. I suggest you wear it at all times.”
“...I don’t get a giant robot then?”
“We haven’t much time,” the cat said, starting in a dash for the front door. “There’s a Black Moon operative in the market area, and lives are at stake.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Serena shouted, stopping Luna in her tracks. “I am not going out in public with this thing! Darien will never let me live it down!”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Luna said, dashing for the door once again, “You’re Sailor Moon now.”
The girl just looked at her, unmoving.
“...I understand that. But when I go to school next week, I will be ridiculed for the rest of my life.”
“No, no, no, you don’t quite understand me. No one can recognize you in your uniform. You will appear to be a completely different person.”
Serena looked at her reflection in the microwave door. She looked like she was on her way to a snobbish costume party.
“...I look exactly the same!”
“To your own eyes, you look the same,” Luna was beginning to grow restless and she wasn’t hiding the fact. “But no one else will know who you are. It’s a temporary safety mechanism we added to protect you during the course of your normal life. You needn’t worry. Now let’s go!”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re totally lying to me?”
The cat leapt at the doorknob as if she wanted to go walkies. As much as she hated to admit it, and she just knew it was the locket's doing, Serena felt the urge to follow, not so much due to curiosity as to some hopeless sense of responsibility. Like how she felt when her father told her to go to school every day, except in this case her life would be threatened whether or not she played along.
With a huff, Serena bid her social life goodbye and headed out the door and down the street toward Sunny Valley Plaza.
*************************************
“So do I get some kind of powers or weapons as Sailor Moon?” she said unenthusiastically. Making small talk with the cat would at least keep her mind off of what pedestrians might think of her mental health when they saw her parading around in such a horrible outfit. Until she realized she was talking to a cat.
“One step at a time, girl! You’re completely inexperienced! I will provide you with what you need when you are ready for it.”
Without any warning whatsoever, something resembling a palm-sized calculator materialized in front of her face and she nearly tripped grabbing it out of the air.
“For now,” Luna said, “I will give you this.”
“...A calculator?”
“Whenever there is a problem, I will contact you on this palm computer. You can call me on it as well. All the Silver Millennium Soldiers will have one once we’ve banded them together again.”
Sailor Moon remembered the demigoddesses from her dream visions and her face lit up.
“I’m gonna have minions?”
“No! Villains have minions!”
“So, what, then? This is it? I fight evil with a Personal Digital Assistant?
“Shut up and keep moving...”
*************************
The moment the plaza’s patrons stepped over the jewelry store’s threshold they left their civility outside: Mothers, businesswomen, and even studious college students without the slightest interest in material goods were wrestling one another to get the best items in the shop for the lowest prices any merchant ever dared to advertise. Sterling silver necklaces and gold Rolex watches proudly wore tags reading less than a fourth of their market value. Molly and Rachel stood at the door and watched the spectacle in shock and awe.
“Holy crap, man,” Rachel said. “These people are savages!”
“I guess it’s every woman for herself,” Molly said thoughtfully, coveting a set of pearl earrings in the nearest display case.
She offered her hand to her friend, who shook it with a smile.
“Best of luck to you, Rachel!”
“Best o’ luck, Mol.”
With a nod, the two girls bolted in opposite directions. Both were considerably petite, and both played tennis regularly, so both were darting in and out of the violent crowds of hostile customers and snatching everything they could carry, sometimes taking items two or more women were fighting over without their notice.
“Younger and faster!” Rachel shouted with a laugh as she dodged one woman’s airborne shoe.
Molly failed to plunder as freely as her friend did, being scatterbrained and indecisive as she was. The shopkeeper, a tall, slender Englishwoman in her late thirties, took immediate notice and swept across the room to assist her.
“Hello, there!” she cooed.
She appeared so suddenly she got a bit of a squeak from Molly.
“Oh! Uh, hi. Is everything ninety percent off?”
The woman had the whitest teeth Molly had ever seen, and she showed them pretty often when she talked.
“Um, yeah,” Molly said, muddling over several sets of earrings. “Yeah, a little...”
“Well, I don’t blame you. We have quite a selection.”
She looked the sweet girl up and down, admiring her wavy red hair and the adorable bow resting on her head, and her bright green eyes skipping over five different name brands she equally liked.
She isn’t buying into it like the others, she thought. Unusual girl, indeed.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Huh? Oh. Molly.”
“Molly,” she echoed, tasting the word. “Molly, I know exactly what you need. Do you fancy emeralds?”
Before the girl could answer, the woman was rummaging around in a box behind one of the store’s large glass counters.
“Um, those are the green ones, right?” Molly said.
“Oh, yes,” she said a bit too enthusiastically. “Daresay they're the precise color of envy. I feel that our emerald selection would suit you perfectly. A flawless head of luscious red hair like yours should always be complimented by equally divine greens.”
She reappeared to startle Molly with the loveliest gold necklace that she swore must have been stolen from the Queen of England, herself. Clinging to the golden chain were a dozen emerald icicles in a perfect V-formation, each one sparkling in the fluorescent lights of the store. Each one reflecting images of havoc going on behind her. Even Rachel was spitting and yowling like the rest of them, her guile and sense of humor nowhere to be found as though she were possessed.
She paid no notice. The junior-senior prom was coming up in the next three months. She saw in each emerald the bright green faces of every girl she hated at school, cursing her and wishing they could look like a princess, too.
“This will bring them out wonderfully,” the woman said with a sneer. Her perfect teeth ground together in a harlequin’s grin, and seemed a bit sharper than before. “What do you say, Molly, Dear?”
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you recommend or rate the work highly...
Another impeccable chapter. What I like about this series is the consistent quality of the chapters. No grammar or spelling mistakes that I can see, superb word choice, and skillful use of humor. You capture the essence of the series perfectly while adding a unique twist to it, and I have not found an equal yet. I will keep reviewing your chapters... you have not disappointed so far.
Especially humorous was your description of Molly and Rachel in the jewelry store pandemonium. The mental image you gave was perfect for the setting. I anticipate more like this!
Welcome !
