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Tallulah had never been grounded before. At first, it had seemed like her parents would let her get away with a slap on the wrist – they had never grounded her before – but then her dad had uttered those fateful words and her heart had dropped into her stomach and she knew she was into it.

“Hey, kiddo? We need to talk.”

It was almost like Angus and Nellie were reading off a script – there was a lot of “We thought we raised you better than that.” (They had.) And a couple of “You betrayed our trusts” and even the elusive “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done,” with the added addendum that she would be ungrounded in a month, or as soon as she came clean about what she’d been up to.

Friends were cancelled. Dates were cancelled. She was allowed to go to MUN meetings and swim practice and her regularly scheduled volunteering jobs, but at all other times she was to be home. A 10:30 bedtime was to be strictly imposed. And so began Tallulah Cowden’s month in solitary confinement.

The first night, she took a bubble bath and painted her toenails – Meadowview orange. She rubbed icy-hot on her bruises, did homework, and went to bed before her mother came in to announce lights out. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day, etc etc etc.

The second night, she did homework and helped cook dinner and watched an episode of LOST with her parents. This wasn’t as enjoyable as people had made the show out to be, but she reasoned it was because she hadn’t been paying attention for three seasons.

Day three progressed much like day two, but LOST was replaced by Dancing with the Stars, which made her long for exciting costumes and enhanced agility. Some of the dresses reminded her of Sailor Scylla’s uniform.

And on the fourth day, she started getting antsy. Her bruises had healed and she felt refreshed, and Tallulah was eager to get back into the thick of things. Her henshin pen and her senshi phone lay untouched in the drawer of her nightstand, and yet all night long she dreamed about flying through the air, leaping over the skyline of Destiny City, her long dark hair rippling behind her like a banner-

On the fifth day, the previously scheduled monotony was interrupted by her parents telling her she could see Jaimie, but only if he came over for dinner first, and then they would decide.

“When?” asked Tallulah.

“How’s this Saturday?” replied Nellie.

That was three days from now.

“I’ll ask,“ said Tallulah, her mind racing. She hadn’t, at least not knowingly, been in contact with any senshi besides Pyxis since her grounding, and didn’t know if there was anything new going on that she ought to know about. In a week, everything about the battle with the Negaverse could have been turned on its head.

Idly, she started thinking about possibly trying to break out, knowing full well that if she got caught it would be curtains for her. So she took another bubble bath and watched The Dead Poet’s Society and reminded herself how good it was to be on “vacation” from getting beat up every night.

Maybe she would serve the rest of her sentence without complaint; Tallulah wondered if anything bad could happen to you from not henshining up for a month.

This was the basic template for Tallulah Cowden’s latest nightmare: everything in the world has gone gray, and you are all alone. Where her “classic” nightmares typically involved failing a test, forgetting her homework, or drowning during a swim meet, this one’s meaning couldn’t be so easily discerned.

She was in downtown Destiny City, but everything was gray, like you’d stuck the frame in photoshop and hit “desaturate” a few too many times. It wasn’t exactly that she was being chased – Tallulah didn’t feel the rushing sense of urgency or the taint of an unseen menace like she did in some dreams – more like she was being pulled forwards.

Invisible fishing line tied around her brooch or not, Europa felt compelled to keep moving. Yes, Europa – she was Europa here in this dream, although if that was the case then Tallulah could not fathom why she was on foot instead of leaping from building to building. Her path was clear, at any rate- no cars, no pedestrians, no businessmen in suits running frantically between buildings, trying to get last quarter’s numbers in before the exchange closed—

The world was uncannily deserted. The only thing she could hear was her own ragged breathing, which seemed out of time with her actual intakes of breath, and the pounding of blood in her ears. After a while, even the familiar streets of downtown Destiny City warped and changed, the waterfront becoming a crude caricature of itself, the solid masses of buildings fading away until they were just sketchy outlines.

Do-do-do-doot-doot dah doo doo doo dah…

The opening musical strain of A-Ha’s Take On Me played and then faded out – she wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Everything was starting to move on its own now, anyway. She was pretty sure she’d just seen the statue from the park ride by – some long-dead revolutionary war hero on his horse.

A piece of glass fell from a collapsing skyscraper, and instead of shattering, lodged itself in the concrete in front of her. Europa stared at her reflection. She didn’t look like herself – or, rather, she did, but not the way she was now-

A much younger Europa stared back at her, Tallulah aged six or seven, her uniform hanging off her, baggy and overlarge. She looked down – her uniform looked fine, her limbs looked fine- she was herself, seventeen.

The figure in the glass melted grotesquely, all the color running off it like liquified paint, and then its very form twisting – eyes gone hollow, costume gone to tatters, limbs squishing and elongating all at once.

She reached out to strike the mirror and clear a path. It shattered into a million pieces, glittered like fish scales, became water, then coagulated into a quivering human form.

Europa moved a gloved white hand to touch the figure. It was ice cold, dead - she could feel it burning through her glove like dry ice.. She turned it over and for the first time its form became distinct. Some nights, it was her mother or her father, other nights it was Pasha or Aggie or any other of a number of school friends. Sometimes it was Jaimie.

On the worst nights, her own dead face stared back at her, eyeless sockets gazing into oblivion.

Billie Jean is not my lover--

Tallulah awoke with a start. It was morning – her alarm clock had been playing WDCE’s Best of the 80’s morning show for five minutes.

She’s just a girl who thinks that I am the one, but the kid is—

Tallulah reached out and turned off the radio. The dream’s meaning remained elusive, but she at least knew she had the undeniable need to get back out on patrol.

Regular - Hey, I know you! - Tallulah and Peyton- Completed

Tallulah runs into an old friend at the Shufflepuck while accompanying her mother on some errands.

((OOC: I got Vamps's okay to use Castor in this.))

There must have been a massacre to leave this much blood.

The hallways of Crystal Academy ran with blood. Every time she moved her feet, her boots splashed down into three inches of red. It was thick and vivid, like blood in movies, like what characters on Buffy might drink or what Sacha Baron Cohen bled when Johnny Depp sliced his throat open, like strawberry syrup. It splashed and got everywhere- her steel blue boots were stained red; blood dripped down her legs, congealed on the backs of her knees, spattered darkly on her rust-colored shorts and stained the white front of her uniform deep crimson.

Sailor Europa and Sailor Castor passed an open classroom door. The two senshi peered into the room: it was a science lab – desks in front, long lab tables at the back. At every single desk was a crystal girl in a sky blue uniform, slouched in her seat, a dark hole in her chest and a stream of blood leading from her heart onto the floor.

“We couldn’t save them,” said Castor. Europa looked at him. He was gaunt, a bit nightmarish looking, like a Tim Burton character. His brown-blonde hair all askew, the gem was missing from his tiara- his bloodstained uniform was ripped and torn, and an angry red gash puckered the side of his handsome face. “Come on, Shorts,” he said, lacking his usual edge.

They kept walking. Every classroom they came to, it was the same story – row after row of lifeless Crystal girls bleeding out onto the floor, the dark holes in their chests seeming to draw all the joy and light out of the universe.

Tallulah had only rarely been onto the school grounds of Crystal, a few times for swim meets recently, and a few times for tours while she was still viciously competing with Giselle Petrova for the scholarship. Her unfamiliarity with the school only made it more nightmarish – under the rules of dream logic and distorted memory, the sunlit halls of Crystal Academy for Girls became impossibly long and gloomy. Portraits of dead benefactors and famous alumni stared sternly down at her and Castor as they trudged somewhere unknowable.

A pair of enormous oak door towered before them.

“Kiss for good luck?” asked Castor weakly.

Before she could tell him not on his life, a burst of angry wind whipped up the blood around their feet and pushed the doors open.

The scouts stared into the darkened auditorium for a moment, and then the lights came on. (At this point, Europa wished the lights had stayed off.) In every single chair in the plush auditorium sat a Crystal girl in a blood-stained uniform, her eyes dead and turned to the stage, her chest open and empty, a river of blood flowing from her exposed, cracked sternum.

Europa and Castor took a sloshy step into the room, and then another. Every girl in every chair turned to stare at them with empty, dull eyes. A shiver ran down Europa’s spine as they moved towards the empty stage and ascended the stairs. They stood in the spotlight, three hundred pairs of dead eyes watching them as they stared back.

“We couldn’t save them,” Europa echoed, and in this moment, she understood that she and Castor were the only ones left, of anyone, anywhere – the last senshi. There had been a great battle here, and they were either the survivors, or losers who didn’t know it yet.

“We couldn’t save them,” she said again, and wept. The world went blurry with tears, and this somehow made it sharper, because she could now see distinct faces, those of girls she’d gone to middle school with, or knew from swimming, or Giselle – why was Giselle there? Where was Sailor Libra? Or Milla, her study partner- or-

Everyone was dead. They couldn’t save them.

“I couldn’t save you,” said Castor.

“What?” asked Europa, not understanding what he meant.

“I couldn’t save you,” said Castor.

“I’m still here- I’m okay-“ she protested.

“I couldn’t save you,” he said again, and Europa looked down. Blood poured from her neck and chest. The human body was said to contain six quarts of blood, a gallon and a half, but far more spilled down her front, down her uniform, down her legs, across her boots, onto the floor-

“Call nine one one,” she said. She fumbled with her pockets, found her phone, shoved it at him- “Castor, call nine one one!”

He took the phone from her, opened it, dialed- “I can’t get through.”

“Elzo, call nine one one!” she insisted, more frantic. More blood spilled from her neck, thick and vivid, like Hollywood special effects, like a victim on NCIS. “Elzo, call-“

“I couldn’t save you,” he said, and she realized he was bleeding, too. They were both bleeding out onto the floor of the auditorium. Maybe they’d been dead all along and hadn’t realized it until now-

Europa felt hollow.

“We couldn’t save anyone,” said Castor.

From somewhere far above the scene, maybe perched up on the lighting rig, Tallulah watched as Europa and Castor both collapsed, lifeless, into a pool of their own blood, that ran onto the floor and mingled with that of an entire dead world.

Battle - Tisiphone's Dark Plot! - Tisiphone, Serandite, Bellatrix, Europa- Completed

Europa interrupts a mugging for Bellatrix's starseed.

Tallulah repurposed an old corkboard from the garage to be her wall of crazy, and hung it on the back of her closet door. She had been seized by something akin to the productive streak she often felt in the last weeks of summer vacation, the desire to return to patrol in a week refreshed, but also with something accomplished, a plan for the next school year, fresh notebooks and a crisp daily organizer.

This was what she aimed to do here – undoubtedly none of the Senshi had ever put to paper what their goals were, simply assured themselves that they knew them. But Tallulah was a devotee of the order of thumbtacks and post-it notes and bright red yarn, and if anyone was going to get to the bottom of this then she would.

The board was a good bit bigger than your standard full length mirror. At the top, Tallulah placed a placard reading “SENSHI” in bold letters, and at the bottom she placed one reading “NEGAVERSE.” (A card reading “ALIENS?” also went somewhere near the bottom, but off to one side.)

She wrote “Find the moon princess” on a post-it and stuck that on the Senshi side. Another note with everything Giselle had told her about the Zodiacs went up as well. Guardian Cats were a separate piece of paper, and Astraea/Luna was yet another (hers was linked back to the “Find the moon princess” card).

Connected to negaverse, she placed “paramilitary organization,” “Take over the earth,” and “Youma.” Next to the aliens, she pinned the card from that evening, along with a note about card monsters.



Tallulah bit her lip and stepped back to admire her handiwork. It was a start, but she would need a lot more information before she could consider this anything close to comprehensive. For a while she struggled to remember the names that Kunzite had written on the bulletin board that night, but beyond that most of them were Japanese she came up empty besides, perhaps, an off-hand comment that Astraea had made that same night.

“Sailor Moon, Japan, 1980s,” she scribbled, and stuck it onto the board besides Astraea’s name. She then added, “Bunny.”

(All of this would be the subject of furious google searching tomorrow.)

“Lu?” called Angus. Tallulah shut the door.

“Yeah, Dad?” she called.

“Come watch a movie with me.”

Tallulah obediently trooped up to the living room (A side-effect of row houses: your living room was on the second floor) to see what he wanted, and was greeted with the title screen of Inglourious Basterds.

“Have you seen this yet?” asked Angus, patting a seat on the couch.

“Parts of it,” she replied warily as she sat down. “In history. For a debate-

Angus passed her the bowl of popcorn he was balancing on his knees and hit play. Tallulah munched idly and curled her legs up under her.

“Someone ought to do that here,” Angus said after a while.

“Do what here?” asked Tallulah.

“Take the thugs to task – you know, all those murders, those terrorists? Kiddo, you’re so involved in world events, don’t you know what’s going on in your home town?”

Tallulah nodded vigorously. She knew what was going on in Destiny City far better than her father could anticipate.

“Someone ought to take them to task. Get me eight red-blooded American soldiers, go scalp terrorists.”

It was an idea, thought Tallulah, who was already starting to form a plan. Though she thought she would stop short of scalping. That could be messy.

Googling it was easier said than done. Most of it was in Japanese, which was to be expected, but Tallulah didn’t speak Japanese and running it through Google translate yielded results that were less than useful, to say the least.



This didn’t tell her anything she hadn’t known before, besides localizing it to the Azabu-Juuban district of Tokyo. Talks of deaths and explosions made it sound like the events were nearly perfect mirrors of each other – perhaps researching the events would not tell her how to fight this war. Astraea-Luna had edged them in the direction of understanding that Sailor Moon and the Moon Princess they were looking for were the same person, but the articles she could find, no matter what their original value might have been, meant nothing to her once Google Translate had had their way with the old newspaper archives and conspiracy sites.



This wasn’t much help, either. Tallulah strongly suspected something had been lost in translation, although the accompanying photograph, grainy as it was, confirmed that Sailor V’s uniform fit the Senshi profile. Furthermore, most of her activity predated the earliest reports of Sailor Moon – a precursor? Or had the senshi modeled themselves after an unrelated superhero?

This, she reasoned, was a silly idea. The uniforms were clearly drawn from some central reasoning, or else they wouldn’t look the same. It would be more of a Justice League thing, with no unified sense of style or aesthetics. But that left the issue of “V” not being an astrological name that she could come up with.

Additionally, Sailor V looked to be working with the police, not against them being accused of terrorism. Her apparent legitimacy where, in the year 2010 they had found none, confused Tallulah – What had their predecessors done differently? She knew from the night of the meeting that there were upwards of fifty active Senshi, not counting the Zodiacs, but of all the pages she had sifted through (and the most promising links all seemed to be inactive), nothing could indicate more than about half a dozen players in the 1980s events.

It had been a fruitless search, beyond the specification of Azabu-Juuban and the introduction of the mysterious Sailor V. The links, she reasoned, were just too old. What she had found had been like digging up pieces of the internet from another era – it was perfectly logical that the bandwidth on some of these sites had been eaten by the ever advancing march of progress.

Tallulah logged off and turned to her board. She tapped a thoughtful finger to her lips, but elected not to post anything about Sailor V yet – she needed better translations before she could really do anything with the information. She picked up the marker and added “Azabu-Juuban” to the note about Japan in the 1980s, but that was all for now.

She wasn’t getting anywhere very fast. It was frustrating.