[Note: I'm using the dub names - or rather, my own personal variations thereof, which if you're not familiar with them, will quickly become apparent - for the characters. It does NOT, however, take place in the "NA universe." I'm simply more comfortable with those names - no disrespect to the original series intended. If this is legitimately a problem for you, do us both a favor and quit this file now.] "Mercury Switch" by Devin de Gruyl (The yes-I-*have-been-beaten-up-by-a-girl Kid) Part 2 --- In hindsight, I suppose it was understandable that I wasn't paying full attention to where I was going. After all, it's not every day you wake up and find yourself out of body, out of place, and even out of gender. But somehow, I doubted that this snarling tower of muderous indignation in front of me was going to believe that. Hell, in his place, *I* wouldn't believe me either! I had been walking along the road that my intuition told me was the proper way to my... er, rather, Ami's... school, my mind lost in a veritable sea of ponderables. I had so many questions about my current predicament: * How did I get in this body? * Who did this to me (and to Ami), and why? * Was the process - whatever it was - reversible? * Did the school's dress code EXPRESSLY forbid wearing shorts under skirts? (This uniform was entirely too drafty for my taste...) * What kind of person was Ami, normally? Could I survive this day without doing anything that might make people suspicious of her (and of me)? * Who was I? What did I want? Did I have anything worth living for? I was in the middle of chastising my brain for the pointless references in that last item - - when I slammed head-on into somebody. The force of the impact sent us both to the ground. I was the first to "break the ice," as it were. Ignoring the still- unnatural (for me) pitch to my voice, I yelled "Ya stupid ox! Why dontcha learn to watch where the hell it is... you're... gooooooooooooooooooooooh shhhh..." The guy I ran into chose that moment to bring himself to his full height. All twenty feet or so of it. He was a HUGE, powerful-looking slab of beef. Mr. Universe had arms and legs like tree trunks, a chest so big you could drive on it (and probably strong enough to withstand it, too), and a fist the approximate size of Minnesota. (OK, so I'm exaggerating. But, as God is my witness, it's not by a whole lot.) The latter he waved in my face angrily as he regarded me with a steely gaze. "WHO needs to watch where WHO'S going, girlie?" he growled. Ordinarily, I would have told this character precisely where he could shove his attitude. But this was hardly an "ordinary" situation. I started to slowly back off. Only problem was, I was trapped against a wall, meaning that "Andre" was effectively blocking my only escape route. "Hey! I'm TALKIN' to you," he bellowed, shoving me further against the wall. "What'sa matter, cat got yer tongue?! Guess I'll just have to BEAT an answer outta ya!" I thought. I shut my eyes and braced myself, waiting to feel the impact... ...but it never came. Instead, I heard a new, female voice: "Sir?" she asked, "I hate to interrupt, but I'm from the school paper, and I'd just like to ask you one survey question..." He turned to face the new arrival, only to be introduced to a wicked uppercut. This was quickly followed by a series of punches and kicks - lots of martial-arts stuff - that... well, let's put it this way. The overall effect was like watching that old comic-book ad played in reverse; Charles Atlas was quickly reduced back to 98-pound-weakling status in a matter of seconds by this *one* girl. She wrapped things up by picking up his body and tossing it back on the ground. With a grunt of satisfaction, she finished her earlier sentence. "The question was, 'You ever been beat up by a girl, jerkface?!'" The formerly imposing assailant decided, by way of an answer, to get the hell out of Dodge. I swear, the guy actually left skid marks on the pavement! (Amazing he could run so fast, after getting beat-on so severely...) "Guess that means I can put you down for a 'Yes', right?" she called after him. I took advantage of the momentary lull to give my savior a close look. She was tall and muscular, almost Amazonian in appearence. Her auburn hair was tied back in a volumnious ponytail that left two small strands of hair hanging forward seductively around her ears. She wore a uniform similar to mine, but with a longer skirt, no bows, and whatever was blue on mine, was a pale brown on hers. She continued to glare sternly in the direction that the Cowardly Lion had retreated, then softened as she turned to face me. "Ha! I wouldn't bet on his bothering you any more, Ames - not as long as he knows who's got your back, right?" I nodded. It was just about the only thing I could do. My voice was still AWOL... and anyway, I didn't want to risk betraying anything that implied I wasn't who I appeared to be. I was clearly supposed to know this girl, and she could easily pick up on anything suspicious. "Hey, you OK? You look positively spooked!" "Um... no... I'm, ah, fine," I managed. "Just fine... thanks for the help there, uh... er..." She looked at me oddly. "Lita," she offered, tenatively. "LITA! That's it! Yeah, thanks, Lita." When she continued to stare at me as if I'd suddenly grown about fifteen heads, I quickly explained, "That must have freaked me out more than I thought! For a minute, I actually couldn't remember your name - can you believe that?" Lita seemed to mull this over for a second, then made a dismissive noise and brightened again. "Don't sweat it - hey, even Einstein was absent-minded every now and then, right? But if you don't get it in gear, Serena's actually gonna BEAT us to school! And I think if THAT happens, it'll be one of the Seven Signs!" And with a laugh, she took off down the road. I followed along just behind her, letting her guide me to the school. The rest of the way was uneventful, but it gave me the time to think things over. Obviously, I had to watch my step around this Lita person, especially if she and Ami were the good friends they seemed to be. Say the wrong thing around her, and my cover would be ancient history. And who was this "Serena" that had been panned twice thus far? Another friend (as "Mom" seemed to imply), or just somebody we made fun of? Before I knew it, we had arrived at the school. Just in time, as it happened - the warning bell went off just as we got in the front door. I continued to tag along behind Lita through the hallways... until, just before she got to her homeroom, she stopped me. "Where d'ya think you're going?" "Huh?" "Your homeroom's down THAT way," she said, pointing in the opposite direction of the way we came. "...Right. Of course. I knew that. Thanks again." I started to leave, but she took my arm. "Hey, Ames... are you SURE you're OK?" she asked, in a somewhat worried tone. "I've never seen you like this before..." Uh-oh. I had to do some fast talking now, or I was sunk. "I'm *fine*, Lita. Nothing's wrong... except that I'm gonna be late now, if I don't hurry. Bye!" I took off down the hall. As I left, I thought I heard Lita mumble something under her breath - "Burnout," it sounded like - but I couldn't be sure. I had gotten about halfway through the hall before I realized - I had no idea which homeroom was mine! Yep... this was gonna be a loooooooong day. --- Memo to self: Must remember to thank lucky stars at first opportunity. The first door I came to *just* happened to be my correct homeroom. And wonder of wonders, I wasn't even late! (Well... OK. You got me. I beat the bell by only about three-tenths of a second. But still...) Once again, I felt myself being led to the right room. I hadn't yet figured out where this intuition was coming from, but I had begun to form some interesting theories... but that's an explanation for later on in the story. For now, all you need to know is that I was being continually nudged in the right direction by some internal force. Right now, however, my primary concern was getting through these classes... and what classes they were! Calculus, advanced physics, English Lit... at one point between classes, I dug out Ami's ID card again just to make sure this was a JUNIOR high school! (I mean, I knew the Japanese had a rigorous educational system, but I didn't expect anything like THIS at this level!) Even so, I continued to have rare good luck; at no point during the morning was I called on to disucss anything in class. I doubted I could BS my way through a lot of this stuff and still come off as intelligent as Ami obviously was. The whole school day was like this. There's not a whole lot more to tell about it. However, there was one very important incident that ocurred at lunch. And if you thought this story of mine was "out there" before... as the saying goes, you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet! We're about to enter an entirely new level of strangeness... --- Lunchtime at Crossroads was apparently an "al fresco" affair. As far as I could tell, there wasn't even an indoor cafeteria. Nearly the entire student body was eating outside... so I joined them. Anything to avoid drawing undue attention to myself. Now, normally, I eat by myself at lunch anyway, so it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to seek out an unoccupied tree to sit under. The fact that (as I realized when I sat down) I had nothing with me to eat didn't matter. All I really needed was just some time to myself, to try and make some sense out of a day where logic seemed to be taking a vacation. Before too long, I noticed a familiar face moving through the crowd ahead of me. It was Lita, the Amazon who'd saved my butt earlier - and this time, she wasn't alone. She was engaged in a conversation with another girl, who appeared to be too busy stuffing her own face to pay Lita much attention. Neither of them appeared to know I was there at all, so I stealthily maneuvered myself as close to them as I dared, to see if I could pick up on their talk... for all I knew, they just *might* have been talking about Ami, and I could learn something important. I was right, as it happened. This was what I overheard: Lita: "...then she acted as if she didn't know who I was! I tell ya, it really floored me!" girl: "Mmprmph glrbp bzhpmh." Lita: "I mean, don't you find it just a *bit* strange that she's not here eating with us, like she usually does?" (Good; that meant neither one of them saw me.) girl: "Mgrblph... [swallow] Oh, you're probably just overreacting! She's probably just been studying too hard again - you know how she is, especially around exam time!" Lita: "Yeah... yeah, I suppose. Still, it's weird... Hey, didja get a load of the new sub in math? I swear, he looks *just* like..." And the conversation seemed to take a different route, so I got up to make good my escape - but not before noticing that the other girl had this strange reaction to Lita's description of the teacher. WHOA! HOLD everything! I did NOT think that! But even as I tried to figure out just where that thought came from, I ran into another problem. Literally. "OOF!" "Oh! Sorry, I -- aw no, not again..." It was the Schwarzzenegger wannabe from that morning. Apparently, his earlier humiliation at the hands of Lita did nothing to improve his mood. Nor, obviously, did my own repeat performance of the Blunder Of The Day. "Maybe you need to get yourself some glasses! You can get 'em at the hospital - which is where you're gonna wake up when I'm through with you!" THAT did it. I don't care where I am, or whose body I'm in - NOBODY threatens a girl on MY shift and lives! To all hell with blending in; this character was about to know just how Darren McCormick responded to a direct threat! ----- End of part 2. Legal Eagles Take Note: Sailor Moon is TM and Copyright (C) 1992 Naoko Takeuchi / Kodansha / Toei Animation / Bandai. English Language Adaptation is Copyright (C) 1997 DIC Productions, L.P. Any product names mentioned herein are TM and Copyright (C) their respective owners. All rights reserved. No claim of ownership, expressed or implied, is made in the use of these trademarked names, characters, and likenesses. The character of Darren McCormick and this story, however, are my creations. - Devin de Gruyl May 1998