Beautiful Stranger
A Seiya/Usagi alternate reality fanfiction
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Disclaimer: (figured I should put in one of these. I really hope you didn’t think I owned Sailor Moon.) Sailor Moon, Seiya, Usagi, and all related characters are copyright of Naoko Takeuchi, Toei, and Kodansha. This story, on the other hand, is mine.
Shameless plug: (gotta have one of these, too ^_~) visit my webpage, http://www.makenai.org . Not really, you don’t have to.
Now that that’s taken care of.. on with the fic. :)
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My fingers danced on the keys, making up a melody and rhythm as they went, until I hit a sour note and stopped. The song needed something more to it – something special. It needed inspiration, I guess. I let my fingers run up and down the keys, hitting random chords and notes, and playing idly with the tones and drumbeats and some of the million other gadgets and features this electronic keyboard sported. Finally my fingers settled into the familiar melody of “See Me, Boku-tachi no Jidai”.
“Ohayo, Seiya-kun,” I heard a voice behind me, and turned to see our agent entering the room. She was petite and very slim, with incredible long, long, red hair, and a perfect fashion sense. She was good at what she did, too. Our success as a band was largely due to her expertise, which she never flaunted, but could wield like a weapon when she needed. Most of all, she had an incredibly kind and likable personality.
“Ohayo, Kakyuu-hime,” I greeted her in return, using her nickname, “princess”.
“What happened to your new song?”
“It’s kind of stuck,” I replied, turning back to the keyboard and picking up the easy rhythm of “See Me” again. My creative abilities seemed to be in a rut lately.
“I might be able to give you some encouragement,” she said. “I have news.”
Kakyuu was the only person we had entrusted with our secret. Being around us all the time, she was bound to find out eventually – she was a perceptive woman, after all. So right away we had decided to tell her, and she in turn had agreed to keep it to herself. (She took the news pretty well, actually.) It was also a relief to us, knowing our disguise was in Kakyuu’s capable hands, and we didn’t have to worry as much. Over the past months she had become a friend as well as a agent, and I don’t know what we would do without her.
“Don’t you want to hear it?” she persisted. “Well, what if I said I got you a modeling job for Calvin Kleine underwear?”
I turned to see her smiling, and gave a mock-serious glare. Finally leaving my music, I walked toward her. “Alright – so what’s the big news?”
She handed me a glossy magazine, with a blue-eyed, platinum blonde woman splayed across the cover in a sexy pose. The magazine was entirely in English. “What’s this?”
“Alicia Young – a very popular pop star in America. She’s currently doing a world tour – she’s in South Africa right now, but her last stop is Tokyo. She’s planning a huge concert as a sort of grand finale for her tour, with a ten thousand dollar budget – fireworks and big spectacles – to be broadcast live in Japan and America, as well as several other countries. But the best part is her opening act -” she paused dramatically. “Japan’s finest idol trio – Three Lights!”
My eyes jerked up from the magazine. “Us? Seriously?”
Kakyuu nodded.
A ten thousand dollar concert, even if it wasn’t our own… international exposure – I could see the fame already. Sure, we were popular here in Tokyo among the teen girls mostly, but this could be our chance to make Japan and the rest of the world take us seriously. “Sugoi! Kakyuu, have I ever told you you’re amazing? Alright, I say let’s break out the champagne and celebrate!”
“Aren’t you a little bit underage?” she said with a smile and her hand on her hip.
“Oi, oi… but let’s at least wake up Yaten,” I replied, grinning wickedly.
“Yaten-chaaaan!!!” I burst into her room, grabbing the blanket and yanking it off the bed. The figure on the mattress curled up into a ball making mumbling noises. “Wake up, wake up!!” I persisted, while she hid her head under the pillow.
“Shut up, Seiya,” she growled. I jerked the pillow away as well, then grabbed her T-shirt collar trying to drag her off the bed as she fought me, trying to get back to her curled-up position.
“No time for sleeping. It’s the middle of the afternoon! Rise and shine! We have important business!”
“Mou…” Kakyuu laughed from the doorway.
Yaten finally lost and toppled over the edge of the mattress, hitting the ground with a thud. “Ow…” she sat up, rubbing her head where she’d bumped it, and looking very annoyed. “Why didn’t you just say Kakyuu-hime was here?”
“Because it’s more fun this way.”
After Taiki wandered into the room to see what all the commotion was about, Kakyuu told the news to them, and they were equally impressed as I, and excited about the opportunity.
“I’m all for it,” Yaten said, “but if you consider… won’t all the popularity make it even more complicated once we reveal our disguise?”
“Who says we’re going to?” The look I shot her was a little dark, but I didn’t understand why she would say such a thing. We were reaching the height of our popularity, our records were selling like mad… why would we want to ruin it all by going public with our true identities? Eventually, sure… but we had more important things to think about now.
Yaten didn’t say anything, but she seemed a little sullen. Kakyuu cocked an eyebrow and looked at us. “I’ll tell Alicia’s people you’ll do the concert, ne?” she smiled, and walked back out into the living room.
I skipped between my two bandmates and threw an arm around each of them so I was leaning crookedly between Taiki’s high shoulder and Yaten’s short one. I grinned widely. “And you guys doubted me when I said we could make it big!”
Taiki rubbed a fist into the top of my hair. “Idiot, we already are popular! And I’m not sure about this international fame, I think it might inflate your head more than it already is.”
“I’ve heard of this Alicia Young,” Yaten said. “She’s pretty popular, even though I wasn’t really impressed with her music. But the American fans seem to like her. Seiya, just don’t try to flirt with her or anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Taiki chuckled. “Seiya sleeps through every English class, so if she tries to flirt with Alicia-san, she’ll really make a fool of herself.”
I rolled my eyes at the playful jabbing. Smirking, I pulled two slips of paper from my pocket. “You forget,” I told the two, “I have a girlfriend already. And next Wednesday afternoon… she’s promised to meet me at the carnival.” I waved the tickets under Taiki and Yaten’s noses.
Taiki crossed her arms and gave me that pursed-lip look that said she was about to disagree with someone, although there remained a twinkle of amusement in her eye. I shoved the tickets back in my pocket and waited for whatever it was she was going to say.
She sighed. “That’s all great, Seiya, but I’m not sure if this really qualifies as a date. Going sightseeing, meeting her at the carnival… it’s pretty borderline, and if you want to get technical – “
“What? Come on!”
She held her palms out. “I’ll allow it, I’ll allow it. But your final date has to be a big romantic deal – an expensive restaurant, you in a fancy suit, a limo, a romantic walk in the moonlight afterwards…”
Yaten chimed in. “How about dancing with her under the gondola by the lake in the park?”
“Yes, that sounds good,” Taiki said. “And then at the end of the night you have to get her to come back to the apartment with you.”
“And get her into your bedroom, and then – “
“Yaten!!”
“Gomen, gomen,” she grinned.
I looked at my two friends with suspicious eyes. I knew a setup when I smelled one. I don’t think Taiki and Yaten cared whether or not they lost the bet, they were just determined to make a fool out of me. And if I knew them, they had one thing – sabotage – on their minds for this date. I wasn’t as stupid as I might look.
Nevertheless, there was no way I was going to back down now. “Fine,” I said with a careless wave of my hand. “Piece of cake.”
“What’s a piece of cake?”
Kakyuu startled all three of us by reappearing in the doorway.
“Uh… the concert, O-hime-sama! It’ll be easy. I can’t wait for the day it starts!”
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I’ll have to apologize for so short a chapter after so long a delay. ^^;;
Ohayo=good morning
Hime, o-hime-sama=princess
Gomen=sorry
Mou=(its an expression… sort of an exclamation, used in a lot of different ways. In this case, you could translate it as something like ‘oh my’.)