Mizuno Ami’s Journal

Just a quick note before I run off to cram school.
Haven’t really been able to talk to Tsukino-san today.
Keep wondering about what happened with Rei-san…and also about this Tuxedo Kamen person who was also at the site of the missing girls.
We had to re-open the portal, and he actually helped Tsukino-san get through the portal in time as something was trying to drag her back.
Could it be that the other senshi guardian we’re missing is male? Because I doubt he could be the princess…

Tsukino-san got the bracelet back to Rei-san, but that’s not even half of it.

She went again today to take the bracelet back…but well…it turns out Rei-san is the priestess at the Hikawa shrine (the shrine that’s curse has been blamed for all the missing girls). Tsukino-san said there were some girls picking on Rei-san, but she managed to dissuade them away, before she came to meet me. I was checking up on the pattern of the girls who were going missing.

We had an interesting time…because the girls going missing had all been mikos at an event the Hikawa Shrine had recently. Then we saw Rei-san also there. We had some very tense time where we disguised ourself as mikos also and were wondering if maybe Rei-san was also a youma, and thought we might have to fight with her, and that was just a bad thought. I was hoping if she was maybe she was a youma the way sensei had been a youma and we could cure her.

Fortunately she wasn’t a youma. While Moon and she were in a strange portal the youma had opened up to trap the kidnapped girls in Rei-san found her own well of power. Hers was centered around fire, and she became the senshi of Mars! Unfortunately she doesn’t feel that she needs to work with us. She left on rather nasty terms with us. I suppose there are some personalities that Tsukino-san’s bounciness wouldn’t go over very well with, and Rei-san’s is one of them.

Tsukino-san was more than a little disheartened by the brush off, but I have a feeling she’ll bounce back.

Tsukino-san’s mother is very animated, and funny. At one point she actually sat on Tsukino-san when they were having an argument about whether or not the coffee her mother had made was tasteless or tasteful. Mama-san is never really home for us to have such a relationship…I think I may be a little envious.

I took my little laptop over with me to Tsukino-san’s. Her mother thought we were studying, so I made sure that for part of the night we did so that Tsukino-san wouldn’t have to lie to her mother.
Luna was still out trying to find information about Sailor V, proof either way as to whether or not she’s the princess or an enemy, and hadn’t gotten back to us. She gave me a phone/henshin (sort of) device like Tsukino-san’s. I say ’sort of’ because rather than facilitate my transformation into Mercury, it enables me to disguise myself as other people.

Tsukino-san was explaining how she’d tried to take the bracelet the girl possibly ‘Rei’ dropped the other day. Tsukino-san had tried to take the bracelet back but the girl is at one of those shrines, and so Tsukino-san got carried away because of all the rumors and scared herself out of giving the bracelet back.

She is wanting to solve the mystery though. I think to prove to both herself and Luna that she’s capable as a guardian. Luna keeps comparing her to me, which I think is unfair, we have different strengths. If it was up to me to pluck up the courage to talk to other people who were potential guardians…I don’t know how I would ever manage it.

I’ve decided I really need to look further into these disappearances, it seems to fit half the problem that we might have with youma. Luna was saying that now we’re Awakened our enemy may start in earnest trying to either ferret out and get rid of other guardians/senshi like ourselves and finding the ginzuisho because of the power that it has.

While the youma haven’t kidnapped people before, that might just because they were interrputed before they had the chance. Or maybe they think that going after individuals rather than large groups of people will be less noticed? Who knows how they think? I’m not even sure I should try to think like them…although there has to be someone or something controlling them. They seem to be drones of some sort, extracted from something nearby.

Back to the research board.

Tsukino-san has invited me to come over to her house and relay my findings. She said also her mother is anxious to meet the new friend that she has been talking to her about.
It makes me wish that my mother was home more often so that I could introduce her to Tsukino-san. She would probably like that I’m finding friends at school. But she’s so busy.

I wonder if Tsukino-san got the bracelet back to that girl she bumped into. We were walking to CROWN after school and she collided with someone. The girl was wearing the uniform of one of the private schools in the area, and there was a bracelet on the ground. I think it said ‘Rei’ if I remember things correctly. Tsukino-san decided she must return it to the girl, and so I am here at CROWN by myself while she does that. I hope things go okay, the girl didn’t seem very friendly, but then Tsukino-san has a way with people. I would know.

There was a rumor going around school about girls disappearing from somewhere near a shrine called Hikawa. Lots of students were talking about a curse that a shrine maiden had put on the girls, and the area.

Tsukino-san got rather put off by the idea, and hid under the desk during lunch. She did invite me to sit with her, but I declined as well as I could. I think her friends thought she was insane for even talking to me.

But I explained to her after school that it must look more than a little odd to her friends for her to suddenly be all buddy-buddy with me, even though we don’t know each other, or at least aren’t supposed to know each other that well.

I find consolation in the fact that Tsukino-san is as confused by all of this as I am, and Luna doesn’t seem to be doing much better. Tsukino-san was saying she doesn’t think she’s ever going to get used to the whole thing, ever, and is especially disconsolate that she can’t keep track of the information that Luna is occasionally able to fill us in on.

I’m wondering if the missing girls could be something to do with a youma. It might have nothing to do with that at all, but it would be more useful to check and be wrong than to not check and have allowed something terrible to happen.

I’ve never felt this odd about being in school. It’s really…I feel as though there’s a hazy sheen over everything, and I’m going to wake up any moment to find that it’s still last Friday and I just fell asleep in class and am in such trouble.

There were newspaper articles about our cram school teacher falling down the stairs because of some kind of leak in the building which caused a lot of students to pass out as well. They say our teacher was going for help when she fell because of the fumes. I wonder if she will ever actually come back to school.

Tsukino-san and I spoke briefly; she’s still saying that I should join them to eat, but I point out to her that there’s no way to really explain why all of a sudden I would be talking to them. Her friends have been some of those in the past who have tried to get to know me just for answers to things, or because of Mama’s job. I’m afraid they would ostracize her instead if we were acting so friendly, so out of the blue.

There’s an amazing room, behind/inside Crown, that apparently no one else can see except us. Luna is also worried about ‘Sailor V’ and who or what she may be, whether she is working for us and just doesn’t realize we exist, or is working for the enemy, the ones who create the youma.
Tsukino-san is hoping that we can become good friends, but I fear her friends would be suspicious if I spontaneously started hanging out with them.
Of course, I may also be using that as an excuse because I’m afraid that I will wake up and this was all another very bizarre lucid dream.
Besides I don’t think her friends like me all that much, so I don’t want to invade and make them upset with her.
Ahh!!! I need to re-read that chapter for cram school, and make sure I have my homework before I set off.

I was tempted to stay in bed for the better part of the day.

In fact I did sleep rather late for me, late enough that Mama-san came in to check on me and make sure that I wasn’t ill. She did say that my forehead felt a bit warm, and was concerned, but once I’d actually eaten something I felt quite a bit better.
Then in the afternoon I actually got a phone call. It was Tsukino-san. She and Luna met me at the Crown Center, which was closed, so we could go down to the park and talk some more about everything that had happened, and what the whole point is, or at least as much as I could manage to comprehend. I’d take double trigonometry or even calculus which we’ve just touched on in cram school over trying to understand the idea of senshi guardians.
Tsukino-san was a little apprehensive about the fact that I had a notebook and wrote it all down. It’s going to take some re-reading before I grasp it.
Mama-san was actually still home when I got back (we were only out a couple of hours), so we went down to a noodle shop and had a meal out, which was nice. She’s a little worried about Tsukino-san; that I’ll be out in the cold again in a few weeks…but I’m trying to be positive about it. I didn’t tell her about the senshi things, the first time I’ve ever not told her anything. I feel bad but I really don’t think she would understand. I have a hard enough time with it and I’m so afraid I would put her in danger.

Main points of the information:
There are at least two other senshi guardians. We have to find the Princess and protect the maboroshi no ginzuisho, so that the enemy does not inherit the power to destroy the world.
It’s pretty weighty stuff, Tsukino-san doesn’t quite seem to grasp everything, and Luna is very frustrated with her.
Luna doesn’t remember everything about what’s going on, and also may be frustrated about that.

I had hoped Tsukino-san was different. I feel so naive. Although this goes over the line for ways to pick on me other than just befriending me for school work help.
Right now I’m not sure if I was wrong or not. It seems like she only wanted to befriend me because of this ’senshi’ thing she was talking about, but that could just be some really big and very strange joke…I mean…transforming ‘poof’ into a soldier to fight…what was it, youma that was it.
I should have expected it, but she seemed so different to the others…and that is a more outlandish prank than the others have been…youma, senshi…
I’m not even going to think about it any more. Maybe she’s watched too much about ‘Sailor V’ on the news.

Today was a sort of break-through, but I don’t want to get too excited. I actually made conversation, sort of, considering I was so nervous, with a person who might be interested in talking to me for some reason other than the fact that I make good grades, or my mother is a doctor. Her name is Tsukino Usagi. She’s a bit goofy, and easily excitable, but she seems pretty sincere.She has this really cute black cat, called Luna, who has a crescent moon on her forehead. She’s the reason that we met. I found Luna on the way to cram school: she was separated from Tsukino-san, and as I was setting her right Tsukino-san approached, she said I was ‘funny’ because I had been talking so politely to the cat, and kept talking to me animatedly. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her at first.

We walked by the Crown center, and she showed me the new ‘Sailor V’ video game, and the karaoke machines which have even managed to get the latest Aino Minako release already. I was afraid I would be late to Cram School, and that she was just wanting test scores, but she seems genuine even though I was probably being more than a little stand-offish. *shakes head* that was silly of me, I really would like to find some people who I can be friends with, because I’m me, not because I’m smart, or I study so much, and they just want me to help me with their homework, but I’m afraid to let myself hope.

She did give me a copy of Aino Minako’s new album (which is really good! I’m listening to it right now) and normally people who just want to use me don’t bother with things such as that. I should stop thinking about it and analyzing every little thing about the situation and go to bed.