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Chapter 12: Through the Looking Glass, Darkly

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As September changed into October a strange spectacle appeared in the Japanese night sky, for those who happened to be looking in the right place, at the right time.

Astronomers would consider the ‘event’ just an urban legend, because it wasn’t picked up by any instruments, and a few human eyewitness accounts didn’t account for much. Armchair psychologists would be much more interested, and considered it a bizarre cross between mass hysteria and folie à deux, as those eyewitnesses all spoke of the same thing:

A sudden shooting star. Bursting out of nowhere to arch over the Tokyo heavens. Like a concentrated mass of the aurora borealis, it was a bright and fiery color as it raced overhead – a fire the color of burning roman vitriol.

* * * * * * * *

Naru Osaka was tucked in bed, mindful of school the next day, but wide awake. The curtains were completely open to the cityscape – sure, it was mostly the alleyway, but lying in bed she could just make out buildings and lights and all of Tokyo beyond that. Well, maybe she hoped for a certain familiar, strong, masculine outline to show up behind those curtains on her little balcony just like before. Wherefore art thou, Nephrite?

There was a longing that rumbled from her heart to every part of her body that must be for him, and it made Naru want to shout and dance and throw punches in the air. He occupied every other thought in her head. She had his face memorized, every detail of his smile and his eyes like the pattern of a personal stamp made in his image, inked in her brain. But when would she see him again in person? Why hadn’t he called her? Wasn’t she supposed to start training under him now? They’d shook on it, he couldn’t have forgotten about her so soon. Naru was READY.

Ugh. She just wasn’t tired at all. Lately it took hours for her to fall asleep. The deep of night, under a starry sky, with all its possibilities, was becoming her favorite time of day.

But Naru’s glass doors and balcony were facing the wrong way to see a certain falling star.

* * * * * * * *

Usagi Tsukino was dumping out every single drawer of every piece of furniture in her bedroom, the pile of her belongings growing larger and taller by the second. Somewhere in there was Luna, who had not escaped the avalanche of clothing and general other stuff in time.

“It’s not here!” she despaired.

“What’s not here?” said her little brother, eating a piece of candy and staring into her room from the hallway. “Jeez, it looks like a typhoon came through here! This is really messy, even for you.”

“You shut up, Shingo! Did you take it?!”

“Take what?”

“The Red Rain- uh, I mean, this big red crystal I had! Yeah, it’s only cubic zirconia but it’s giant because, um, my friends and I are making a rainbow set! Ha ha ha, we just love crystals! They’re like shiny Pokémon to us girls! Gotta get ‘em all! Ha ha! Did you sneak into my room and steal it?”

“Why would I ever sneak into your stupid girl room and take your stupid girl stuff?”

“Says the boy who likes dolls.”

“You shut up, Usagi! That was one time, and it was for Mika!”

One feline paw poked out of the clothing-pillows-blankets-stuffed-animals-books-teen-magazines-manga-makeup-hair-bands-cassette-tapes-a-boombox-and-jewel-sticker-earrings-and-packages-of-cookies-and-snacks-and-desk-supplies-and-for-some-reason-a-rubber-ducky pile, and desperately swiped about for help.

None of them were looking at the night sky.

* * * * * * * *

Ami Mizuno was studying, textbooks and composition books and notecards piled higher than ever on her desk. There were even stacks of books on the floor around her, but all of it was neat and tidy, just like her. Her eyes were for informational text only, and not anything happening outside her bedroom window.

She was deep into subjects beyond what they were teaching at Juuban Public Middle School or her cram school sessions. Unlike the grand Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, branches of the Minato City Library let patrons check out books, as many books as they could carry and remain ambulatory – next time Ami would have to go there with a backpack. Or maybe one of those rolling suitcases.

Dr. Saeko Mizuno knocked on Ami’s open door, but her daughter didn’t seem to hear.

“Ami?” she said, and placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Ah!” Ami jumped in her seat. “Oh, I’m sorry mother.”

“I can see you’re concentrating very hard, I just need to give you something and then I’ll leave you be. You remind me of myself, when I studied for my medical entrance exam. All you need is some cheap ramen and giant bottle of Loxonin, and you could be me 20 years ago.”

Although Saeko didn’t think anything like Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology, was on any of her syllabi as a medical student. The book was at the top of one of Amy’s piles.

“I didn’t realize you were so interested in computers.”

“Well, uh – they’re getting smaller and more powerful all the time,” said Ami. “And hospitals use them now, right?”

“Western hospitals, mostly. You know how slow Japan is to adopt any kind of technology besides the fax machine.”

Then Ami noticed what her mother was holding: a brown leather messenger bag, the casual version that was meant for school-aged teenagers, as opposed to the more formal briefcase of Japanese salarymen. But it wasn’t Ami’s; hers was already on the floor, leaning against a leg of her desk.

“Mother? Whose satchel is that?”

* * * * * * * *

Rei Hino was trying not to cry.

It was her last day in the hospital. The doctors said she’d be able to finish recuperating at home. Everything was going to be fine.

It didn’t feel fine.

She had accomplished something amazing, and what did it get her? Boredom. A show of weakness.

It wasn’t bad enough to complain about outside of her own head. The paramedics and the nurses were unbearably kind. Usagi had sent a handmade get-well card; it looked like it was made by a child who’d been held back a year in school, and with their non-dominant hand.

She was wearing real clothes for the first time in what felt like forever, and her grandpa was there to help walk her outside and take her home. And chatting up every single woman he came across, whether or not they were single. Typical.

“You’re too pretty to be working long hours in a hospital!” he said to one nurse. He laughed with his whole body, which, being shorter than Rei and bald, was both a lot and not much at the same time.

“That’s kind of you to say,” replied the nurse, in a long-suffering tone. “Miss Hino, are you ready?”

“Almost,” said Rei. She turned and grabbed Usagi’s card to take home with her. The flowers from her father – those she wasn’t keeping.

When she turned back, her grandpa wasn’t there. The nurse was standing exactly where she’d been the whole time, but now there was a tall, mustachioed man next to her.

“Where – what happened?” asked Rei. “Where did he go?”

“Where did who go?” said the taller man. “The doctor?”

“No,” said Rei. “Where’s my grandpa?”

Both of them suddenly looked at her with concern. The nurse came over and shone a penlight in Rei’s eyes.

“What are you doing,” said Rei.

“Rei,” said the man. “Rei, it’s me.”

He took a step towards her with arms out, and she stepped back.

“Who are you?”

He had very kind eyes, she thought, for a total stranger. Right now they looked – hurt.

“Rei, I’m your grandfather. Don’t you recognize me?”

The nurse asked, “Miss Hino, are you having any pain or pressure in your head?”

“No! This isn’t funny, I just want to go home.”

“That’s what I’m here to do, granddaughter,” said the man.

“I don’t know you – where is my grandpa? He was standing right next you,” Rei said to the nurse. “Didn’t you see him? Couldn’t you hear him, making the same stupid perverted old-man jokes he always makes?”

“Well now, I like to think of myself as more of a mature Don Juan than a true pervert,” the man joked, weakly.

“This isn’t funny!” Rei nearly screamed. “You’re – what’s wrong with you two, how can you play a prank on a patient like this?”

Her empty fingers twitched. Rei didn’t have any of her ofuda slips. Her transformation wand was in the dimensional pocket she always had access to, as Luna explained it – but did she want to risk pulling it out and transforming? Was this even a Sailor situation?

She kind of wanted this to be a Sailor situation. The terrible bear monster that had almost killed Rei – at least she knew exactly what was going on, what was needed of her. This was scary too, in a different way. Maybe in a worse way.

“Rei, please,” the man begged. For what, she didn’t know. At the same time, the nurse went, “Miss Hino, can you sit back down for me please?”

“No!” Rei backed away from both of them. “Stop it, stop doing this! You won’t trick me!”

She stumbled into the hospital dresser, hard. The beautiful glass vase with a dozen white roses jostled and tipped back once before falling forward.

On instinct, Rei moved to catch it. The water and not a few of the flower stems poured out onto the hospital floor. The glass was so much heavier than it looked – thick, expensive glass. She had to let Usagi’s card slip away to hold onto it. But Rei held the glass vase tight, and kept it from shattering into dozens or hundreds of dangerous shards. The movement meant she took her eyes off the older man, just for a few seconds.

When Rei looked again, there was her grandfather. Same as she remembered him.

Rei let herself be swept under his arm, and he shooed off the nurse and her requests to stay for extra tests. His granddaughter was just tired, that’s all, all the more reason to get her home. In the taxi to Hikawa Shrine, he chatted away the entire time, completely unbothered by her brief obliviousness of her own blood family.

Rei remembered her grandfather, she did. She did.

But then who was the short bald man?

The soggy remains of Usagi’s card crumpled to pieces under her tightly clenched hands. Dousing was her fellow Senshi’s specialty, not Rei’s, and she desperately hoped the Sacred Fire would have answers for her.

Either the world was going mad – or she was.

* * * * * * * *

Makoto Kino was prepping ingredients for kuri dorayaki, for a care package she wanted to give to Rei. The Sailor Senshi, her new BFFs (Battle Friends Forever), were all planning to visit Rei at her home, which was apparently also a Shinto shrine? That was kind of cool. She’d wrap it all up very carefully, so that the care package would travel well and also look super pretty.

She just really liked a lot of traditional Japanese homey stuff, like furoshiki. Was that so wrong? Makoto was the tallest and strongest and therefore least girly of all the girls she knew – but no one was better at homemaking than her. The first time she and Rei ever met was during that horrible monster fight; Makoto wanted to make a good second impression. It had all happened very fast, all of it: she was following Crane Game Joe , and then a little black cat with blazing blue eyes was somersaulting a pretty transformation pen out of thin air and telling her – a cat was talking to her! – to say magic words and transform into Sailor Jupiter, and then she was fighting for her life alongside other Sailor girls, and it lasted forever, and then one of them was dying and the fight was all over.

Makoto huffed, kind of like a half-sigh. She shook her head and refocused so she wouldn’t accidentally cut herself while peeling and chopping the food. It was rhythmic and relaxing. The kitchen was her safe space. Here, she controlled everything, and everything always turned out delicious.

She thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, from outside the window, but when Makoto looked there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Hmm. Alright, now do I want to make my own dried persimmons or buy them from the store...”

* * * * * * * *

Nephrite was sound asleep, under the invisible ward that domed over his loft bedroom. It blocked out everything from youma sneak attacks to wandering spiders and flying insects, but let in the nighttime breeze and silvery starlight just fine.

<< wake up! >>

He instantly startled awake. What – who – the stars? Yes, that was definitely their infinite whisper. They had never spoken to him like this before.

The why became clear when a bright, shooting star passed right over him.

The fireball seemed larger than normal, as if it would land right there in Japan. But even more puzzling – instead of being made of traditional white light, it was distinctly and radiantly green.

An emotion Nephrite couldn’t name thrummed in his blood at the omen.

Could this be connected to the Green Rainbow Crystal?

Zipping about via teleportation to find where it landed would be a guessing game and a waste of time and energy. No; Nephrite headed for his starlight chapel to divine the exact coordinates of whatever was falling to Earth, and any other details the stars might bestow.

* * * * * * * *

India was trying not to look as gobsmacked as she felt.

Since when were evil creatures of the night also fashion critics!

She had clocked him (it?) while patrolling in Roppongi. Casual light jacket over a standard business shirt and slacks, about 5’5, smelled more like fast food than beer, wearing a baseball cap over an obvious wig, completely unremarkable, and not in the least bit human.

So, the Slayer had followed him down corners and sideways and alleyways until they were alone, and the creature had finally stopped to confront her. To fight her.

The cheap wig quickly fell to the ground as a second face erupted from the top of his bald head, stretching high on an alien neck, like a really creepy giraffe with a humanoid face. But on a giraffe neck, which should never be connected to a human body, except this time it was and it was horrifying. The snarling, bulbous head hissed from its sharp teeth as it loomed over India. And then it said:

“Hey, where’s your mini-skirt? That coat is so ugly. Let me guess, ‘Made in China’?”

India nearly dropped her tactical knife. “My what?”

Terrifying neck-head guy (India would later learn he was something called a mikoshi-nyudo) followed up with; “Ohhh, I see now. You’re a foreigner. You must be a little stupider than the Japanese girls already here.”

India gripped the handle of her knife tight, and raised it up (really high up, higher than was practical) so it was in plain view of this monster. Well, as much as anything could be in view in a deserted back alley of Tokyo with just one lamppost. She was THE SLAYER. He was the monster about to be slayed. And this was not the classroom! “Excuse me!”

“I’m yōukai, not one of those youma from the Dark Kingdom. Really weird creatures; been popping up everywhere in Edo these past couple of years. Powerful enough, but not too bright. They just love to monologue. Now, you Sailor Senshi girls are finally killing them off, which is fine with us. Who are we to interfere with someone volunteering to clean up the rabble?”

“Oh, let me guess; these youma are stealing your jobs and not learning the language fast enough, right?”

“Hey, you don’t see me hopping over to Kansei and eating nasty Kankokujin, so yeah, these youma should stay in whatever dimension they came from!”

India had to fight not to let her mouth fall open. Wow.

His terrible, head-ish head on a giraffe neck still loomed above India, in line with the metal-and-glass head of the lamppost, but he put his hands on his hips. She was pretty sure that monstrous head, the size of a rhythmic gymnastics ball, tilted a little to the side. “Look, do you really want to fight? Because I’m full and ready to – what is that?”

She shouldn’t have looked. She really shouldn’t have. But India was off her game, from – well, everything. From patrolling alone, instead of with Kit like usual, and he’d been fine and dandy with splitting up to ‘cover more ground.’ Great.

From getting volun-told, in front of the entire class in magnificent passive-aggressive fashion by Chizuru, to be the representative who would ferry homework and generic well wishes to their injured classmate. From taking all that homework to Rei Hino, who was in the hospital, and probably wanted nothing to do with the foreigner who abandoned her to mean girls.

From going back to the barracks every night, her mother gone on yet another vacation with no set return date, and her father working so late that he never came home. From giving in to the language spell, so she could understand Japanese, and knowing for sure that nobody was interested in talking to her.

Unless it was to criticize her wardrobe, apparently.

So India looked. She followed where the mikoshi-nyudo’s 'face' was pointing, easy to track by the light of the lamppost, and saw the trailing tail-end of a falling star. A falling star!? It had to be a sign, the way earthquakes and other omens were: magical, and not good. The meteoroid was close to them, to the surface of the Earth, and burning the wrong color against the industrial black sky.

The bite to her hip registered seconds too late, and then the paralyzing effect of the monster’s saliva began to set in her lower legs.

“Ungh!” She fell over sideways, hit the damp pavement. “You – ugh!”

India Cohen, Vampire Slayer, latest in a long line of supernatural warriors, constantly getting trapped on the freaking ground. It was turning into her signature move. Watch out, WWF!

The mikoshi-nyudo laughed, a kind of hissing laugh. “Ah, what the heck, who doesn’t get cravings for a late-night snack?”

India tried to kick her legs, but her lower limbs only trembled. She used her forearms to start crawling away from the monster. Any distance away from it was good enough for her. When the second head came too close she swiped at it with her knife.

“Naughty girl!” said the mikoshi-nyudo. “You should be a lot slower by now, stop trying to fight back.”

The second head shot forward and bit India on her hand, hard enough to make her drop the knife. It came close enough that India observed it had no eyes at all; it was like something had slit open flesh where the nose and mouth holes should be, wide and deep, oozing and salivating.

“No,” she pleaded. Her own body was getting heavy; she was losing the energy to move at all, let alone shout back at the monster. India never had much of fire inside of her for a fight.

But she did want to live.

India curled up as best she could, on her more-numb side. She moved her arm as best she could, making her numb and bloody hand flop around in clear view of the monster. “No,” she said again, weakly.

“I have a friend who likes to peel the casing off hot dogs before eating them,” said the mikoshi-nyudo. “He’s so weird, but he might be on to something. So let’s just...”

India felt the mouth of that second head bite down on a corner flap of her coat and tug.

“No,” she said, for the third time, and flopped her useless hand in the direction of its head. She tried wriggling around so it couldn’t get a perfect hold of her coat.

It chomped down on India’s already injured hand; just as she wanted it to.

In seconds, using her other hand, India grabbed the knife she’d dropped before, and stabbed the head the entire way through, including through her own hand, to trap it. The way she was positioned it was better to drove the knife upwards from underneath its head, through its mouth that was clamped on her hand (which thankfully was totally numb by now, otherwise she would not have been able to go through with this), and all the way up and out through the top of its second scalp.

India though, briefly and bizarrely, of all the types of skewered food Japanese people like to eat.

The mikoshi-nyudo shrieked wordlessly around it’s spiked tongue, but it wasn’t large or strong enough to carry all of India’s body weight and thrash her around in the air. Instead, the few seconds of confused and painful writhing about were enough for India to pull out her stake from inside another coat pocket.

A Slayer should never travel with just one weapon on her. And India’s 2^nd favorite stake had gotten zero action since landing in Japan – if it couldn’t have dust, it could have plenty of monster brains and blood.

She stabbed the head and its neck for a few minutes, until it slowed and quieted, and finally slumped down and stopped moving.

India kept stabbing it for a couple more minutes, very roughly decapitating it. You couldn’t be too careful, some monsters definitely knew how to play possum. Then she un-stuck her knife from the disgusting second head, and her own hand, using the ground to push-pull everything free.

The head rolled around a little, leaving a trail of blood and other stuff like a snail.

“Gross,” said India. She was so done for the evening.

She lay there for a few minutes, catching her breath. India deliberately didn’t look at her injured hand; Kit could do all that for her. She rummaged around in another coat pocket – how do you like my coat now, stupid creepy head-neck monster! – to activate the magical homing device he’d given her.

Along with a little marvel of technology called a pocket bell, as Japan nicknamed them. Usually only for important people like doctors or stockbrokers, and Kit had gotten one for her! It had to mean something. And not just because it was good for situations where they were too far apart to communicate by walkie-talkies.

But it was also for situations when she was near a phone, so... not tonight. Another night, maybe. Another night when her hand didn’t look like it had been thrown into a food processor, when she and Kit patrolled together, and India could prove that she could be so much more than just his Slayer.

But not tonight.

* * * * * * * *

Dawn Summers was alive!

And she felt cold, crumbly dirt underneath her cheek, which was pretty much exactly how she’d woken up every day for the past four months out in the Scottish moors. So she jumped through a giant dimensional fairy ring, only to end up in more dirt? What is her life, honestly.

The first thing she did was open her eyes, blinking and adjusting her vision to the dark of night. For a second she had some kind of entoptic phenomena, different than weird eye floaters, where it seemed like Dawn was watching the last moment of a concert light show. Like she’d just missed the grand finale and the bright fireworks that came with it, and all she got was the momentary afterimage of neon green.

Then she moved to sit up, but her limbs felt very rubbery and tired. Like she’d run a marathon. Trying to walk had Dawn tripping over the edges of her jeans, why did hemmed jeans have to be so dorky? Such were the problems of being a fashion maven. It was a thoroughly Summers trait, she’d seen the photos of Mom from the seventies. Speaking of: “Buffy?” she called out, and coughed. “Willow? Anybody?”

Where was she? It seemed like nighttime on Earth, in a... valley? Surrounded by a forest? And not a hell dimension, so that was of the good. But she was alone, and that was of the bad.

She stretched her arms and legs, getting some strength back. Dawn was in some kind of shallow crater, and beyond the circumference of it she could make out huge trees that would tower over even a giant like her. So, a forest, at night? Hopefully?

Oh, wait. Duh.

Dawn looked up.

Her crater was cleared of trees and any other vegetation, and it gave her a nice view of the stars. She was more the type to have her nose in a book than her eyes to the heavens, but even a California girl could recognize the Big Dipper.

Definitely Earth. Oh, thank goodness. Or goddess, as Willow would say. Or Godiva, that one time, with Xander, in the Magic Shop, and what they thought was a box of Swiss Mix but was actually powdered alicorn, thankfully meant to be consumed. But what happened to everyone else? Why did she have to be alone?

It felt like she was always alone. Sometimes it was even her own stupid fault, but hey, not always!

A rustling noise came from the copse, and Dawn recognized it as the kind a person made when they weren’t bothering to be stealthy. She wasn’t surprised when a single uniformed man came stumbling out.

He drew a flashlight and shone it on her, making Dawn flinch and put a hand up to spare her eyesight. “Koko de nani o shite iru no?” he asked. “Aoshingō wa dokoda, itazura o shite iru no ka??”

“Okay, I know enough to know that’s Japanese, but I don’t actually speak any Japanese,” said Dawn. Not unless this guy wanted to hear her super cringe (yet secretly beloved) take on Tsuki Ni Kawatte - Oshioki Yo!

“Eh? Nani?”

The – security guard? - carefully made his way down the crater area towards her. He had more to say, none of which she understood, although as he got closer to her there was one thing Dawn understood very well.

She hobble-walked her own way over to the nice man, who trailed off as she came up and met him halfway. Dawn got way too into his personal space until there were only inches between them. He was a fully-grown, middle-aged man, in a country where the average male height was 5 feet, 7.5 inches.

And Dawn wasn’t insanely larger and taller than him. She was, in fact, a little shorter.

“WOO-HOO!”

He jumped back, and brought one arm up as if to protect himself from the crazy white girl.

“I’m normal sized again! Oh thank you, THANK YOU for gigantic magical fairy rings! I can take a shower and walk into buildings not-Godzilla-style and sit on chairs and wear brand new clothes – hang on, why didn’t my clothes shrink down properly with me?”

Dawn took a long look down at herself, finally taking in the state of her outfit. She shook her arms in their too-big sleeves, and kicked out a leg in her too-long jeans. Her too-big sneaker went flying off her foot, and landed somewhere to the left of the security officer, who was just watching her antics in bewilderment.

Dawn put her hands up in front of her face, felt her cheeks and her nose. Was her face rounder than she remembered? Said out loud: “Mic check, mic check: she sells seashells by the seashore.” Was her voice just a little higher than it had been 24 hours ago?

And Dawn finally put together – along with vague memories and even vaguer explanations of how she first arrived in her own home dimension – exactly what stepping through a major magical dimensional portal had done to her.

“I’M A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL AGAIN?! THIS IS THE WOOOOOOORST!”

* * * * * * * *

to be continued...

* * * * * * * *

Author's Notes:

Oh Dawnie. The worst is yet to come. *evil laughter*

Mikoshi-Nyudo-san, your everyday racist yōukai, looking for a Doublemeat Palace burger joint: where’s the mini-skirt, made of snakeskin? And who’s the other guy that’s singing in Van Halen?

In this universe, the mikoshi-nyudo and the Wig Lady from BtVS S6E12 are from the same demon species, in the way that Akitas and Boxers are both dogs.

Also, Usagi’s Pokémon reference is early by a few years, but honestly I just thought the parallel was too good not to use. It’s the trope name after all, even if you’ve also got shard crystal pieces, prism stones, clow cards, poneglyphs, millennium items, and oh yeah something about dragons and their balls... :D