Sidestory:
Dust To Dust

by Angie and Lauren

Idly, Adam Le Blanc dribbled the football as he walked through the grassy verge in front of St. George's British International. It really was a nice night, he thought, sparing a glance up at the swiftly darkening sky. Balmy and fresh and getting towards the magic hour of the quiet before the nightlife kicked in. Inhaling deeply, he smiled and drifted to a stop, the ball trapped under his foot. This was just perfect.

It was perfect for all of about ten seconds.

"Ahem. Don't stop here, heathen. Move it, move it, move it. You have a job to do."

With a sigh, Adam looked down and forced a smile at the scruffy badger that followed hot on his heels. "Alright, Ay," he
murmured. "Just bite my ankles or something when you spot a friendly." Then, chuckling, he started walking again, ball moving surely from foot to foot. If only they could find another Kemet... Ay would surely relax then.

Tall, young, and decidedly grumpy, Mathilde Bernadone trudged out of St. George's, firm in the belief that her shoulder bag weighed about a hundred thousand pounds. Twilight was just descending on the city's skyline, but this didn't inspire too much awe in the brunette, who merely stomped down the steps, annoyed at having to leave school so late.

If it hadn't been for her stupid newspaper meeting, she'd have been home by now, happily plowing through her worksheets on redox reactions. Instead, here it was, nearly dark, and she was only just leaving.

And now she had hours of Chemistry homework ahead of her -- hours which would take her into the wee hours of the morning, if she was any judge. Irritably, she skipped the last few steps and landed with a thump at their base. It would just figure that her feet hurt. Stupid uniform, stupid dress code, stupid twilight, stupid stairs, stupid newspaper...

She continued on for a few steps, feet heavy on the grass as she headed for her bus stop to await the late bus.

"There. That one." True to the teasing words of his charge, Ay nipped at one of Adam's ankles. "That tall, camel-faced creature walking."

With a sigh, Adam shifted his hazel-eyed gaze towards the bus stop. Then he frowned. "Don't be mean, Ay," he muttered. "She's kinda attractive." He squinted in the gathering dark. "...And awfully cranky. You sure about this?"

"Yes. Go."

Nodding, Adam neatly slid his toe under his football and kicked upwards, snagging the ball out of midair. Then he quick-stepped over towards the young woman. What on earth was he going to say? Clearing his throat, he called out, "Miss? Do you have the time?"

"No," snapped the tall girl, stopping and turning to glare at Adam. "And, if I may say, your dog is really ugly. Aren't you supposed to put it on a leash or something?" She turned to walk away.

"Ugly? -Ugly-?" a shrill voice rose from somewhere around her ankles. "We should put you on a leash, you ungrateful little sow!"

Adam winced and covered his face. He must have done something especially awful in a past life to deserve this. "Ay," he
sighed, "Please. Just be nice about it, okay? Just this once?"

Mathilde's face morphed from extreme annoyance to extreme annoyed disbelief. "Listen, amico," she snapped, "As much fun as I'm sure you're having with your creepy ugly dog and your bad schitzophrenic ventriloquism, if you don't lay off and back off right now, I'm going to make you eat my Chemistry textbook, all nine-hundred pages of it, with your little freakshow of a pet right in the middle. Comprendere?"

"Yes, well..." Adam scrubbed his free hand through his hair. "It's not what you think it is, miss. It's like this..."

His words were interrupted by a disdainful snort. "Heathen child, let me do this."

"Excuse me?" Mathilde was now not only annoyed, but genuinely pissed off. "I'm really, truly sorry -- " she wasn't -- "but if you're trying to use your ugly rat terrier or whatever to proposition me, please be aware that I have a vested interest in -not- doing that with you, and can scream so loud they'll hear me in Yugoslavia." She put her hands on her hips. "So take your multiple personalities and go have a personal orgy in a public washroom, okay?"

"You asp-tongued she-demon! Ignore the idiot and look down here." Ay toddled forward, practically quivering with indignant anger. "And I am -not- a godsdamned dog. I wish you people would get it right. I'm trapped in this godsdamned body, a badger! Me! Ay! A pharoah! And now I'm stuck with the likes of you and him and I could spit for the injustice of it all. So don't you dare scream, you overgrown beast. Shut your mouth and listen to me!"

A strange thing happened. Mathilde's mouth dropped open, but she was obviously speechless.

"Right, perfect. You look like a very stupid fish." Ay looked up at his silent charge. "Adam, bring her along to behind that bush. That should suffice." Then, without waiting to be sure his command would be followed, the badger trotted off in the direction.

Gently, Adam touched Mathilde's shoulder. "Miss?" he murmured. "My name's Adam Le Blanc and that is Ay and we'd better do what he says or he'll make an even bigger fuss. Here." Carefully, the dark-haired young man relieved the silent woman of her backpack. "Huh, heavy," he commented lightly. Then he took her by the elbow, warm fingers barely touching her skin, and led her after Ay.

She had been planning to protest. Honestly, she had, and if things had been normal she'd have made such a scene that the crazy man would be forced to leave her alone.

Except this was really, really weird, and she wanted to know what was going on, especially since it involved a talking badger. She was pretty sure she wasn't crazy -- her subconscious had never tossed talking animals her way, in any case. So she allowed herself to be led -- for the moment, because as soon as this turned into a scary schoolgirl rape scene she was kicking asses and taking names, no doubts about it -- brow furrowed into a frown.

Besides, something about this felt weird. There was no way to really categorize it except "weird", but she'd figure it out later, if she had to.

Safely out of the sight of prying eyes, Ay once more rounded on the hapless young woman but this time he was smirking, more or less. "Very well. You are Sailor Seth and you're here to fight for your teammates, your honor, and the proper way of things."

Standing behind Mathilde, Adam winced, teeth gritting. He hated when Ay talked in that manner. He'd have to have -another- word with the badger about bigotry and intolerance. "What he's trying to say, miss, is that, when you say certain words, you become something else."

Incredulity passed over her uneven features. "What is this, some kind of psychotic Harry Potter cult?"

"Oh, just shut up and use that witless tongue for something useful." Ay snorted and settled back on his haunches. "Say Seth Ba Power, Make-up. Now."

Mathilde put her hands on her hips. "You want me to say what? That's just bloody stupid. What am I going to turn into, a stupid American Powerpuff Girl? Seth Ba Power, Make-up? Is that Eng -- " She'd have continued and embellished on her tirade, but sand was suddenly rising from the ground, and she was standing in grass, not the bloody desert, and --

Cue flashy lights and sparkles -- or at least a lot of dust.

When it was over, she stood there, gaping. "Who are you and why did you turn me into Prostitute Barbie?"

"As I told you, I am Ay, a guardian of the Kemet senshi... Much to my pride and torment," the badger sniffed. "You are Sailor Seth and this is Geb and there are others. I advise you all in the battle against the heathen Noord and Graikos. The Romanus... Well, yes, I shall tolerate them. Come on, then. Time to show you your duty."

"Um, hey, Ay?" Adam straightened up from his slouched position against the brick wall. "Maybe she has to get home now. Anyway, mon ami, you can't just send her out like this. Not without teaching her."

Seth glared at the badger and the boy. (Another girl may have been preoccupied with trying to lengthen the extremely short skirt she'd been stuck with, but Seth was fresh out of shame, and instead put her hands on her hips again.) "Teach me what? The ways of the street? What the damn hell are the Kemet senshi?" Her tone, unwittingly, was plaintive as well as irritating and whingey.

That left Ay slightly speechless, incoherent sounds of rage and disbelief slipping from his muzzle. "You... School... Idiot!"

Adam sighed and crouched down to calmly clamp the creature's muzzle shut with a firm hand. "Ignore him," he advised her good-naturedly. "He can't get over the fact that no one really worships Ra anymore and schools don't teach mummification." He looked down at the badger. "Finished, mon ami? Gonna tell her properly or should I?" Carefully, he released Ay. When all the badger did was glare and trot away a few steps, the young man shook his head. "Fine. I'll answer her." Sighing, Adam straightened again and offered the woman a sympathetic grin. "Okay, then. The Kemet senshi are basically the reincarnations of the ancient gods and goddesses of Egypt, chere. That would be us. Each of us get a few powers, tricks to protect ourselves, you know? I do things with the earth. Okay?"

"You're telling me I'm the reincarnation of a god? An Egyptian god? I think you have the wrong person. I'm not even Egyptian, and I don't have a smartassed animal."

"I'm not Egyptian either." Adam shrugged. "And, trust me, not all of us are, um, 'graced' with the likes of Ay here."

She scowled. "So what do we do? Sit around and discuss modern literature? Or is there a catch to getting to wear this highly
fashionable outift?"

Adam nodded, eyes solemn. "War." Suddenly, he paused. "I never got your real name."

"Mathilde Bernadone," she said automatically. She paused for a long moment, then asked, "War? Like, the death-killing-bombs-falling kind of war? We do that? I do that? In this skirt?"

"Not so grand scale but... Yeah." He ran a hand through his hair, slightly agitated. "We're supposed to be against the Graikos and the Noord. Other reincarnations, you know. The Romanus are our allies."

She frowned, then sighed longsufferingly. "So can I change out of this . . . thing, or do I have to spend the rest of my days looking like a Prada ripoff reject?" she asked, tilting her head to one side to examine the young man and deciding that no, she wasn't having an acid flashback, since she'd never done acid.

"Oh, sure. Just concentrate on what you were wearing before and you should go right back."

The tall brunette did, and was thankfully returned to her previous state of fully-clothedness; sadly, this involved her school uniform, but that was much preferable to the short skirt and scrap material posing as a shirt, so she decided not to complain, for now. "Hmm," she said, glancing down and finding that she was no longer flashing strange men. "Interesting, in a creepy way. So is this like an every-Wednesday-night kind of deal? Because I'm kind of busy some days."

Adam laughed, eyes gone warm. Oh, this was much simpler that Rafe had been. "Not really. It's whenever you can do it."

"Which should be every night," a sullen voice cut in.

Ignoring the badger, Adam continued, "Some of us go out more than others, depending. Since I've got him," he indicated Ay with a wave of his hand, "I end up out there most nights for at least a little bit. We'll have to get you to meet the others, though."

Mathilde thought for a second, then grabbed her bag from Adam as though she'd suddenly discovered a missing limb. "I'll have to write it down," she muttered, expertly balancing herself so that her bag was held up by one hand and her hip; unzipping the front pocket, she pulled a leather-bound organizer out, and dug into the bottom, finally retrieving a mechanical pencil from its depths. Dropping her bag on the grass with a satisfying thump, she flipped the organizer open to a blank page and held it out to Adam with the pencil. "Name, phone number, fax number, e-mail address, address," she instructed calmly. "I'm good for most weekends in the evening, but weekdays depend on the day, and I have school and lessons and things in the day every day but Sunday."

Adam blinked for a moment. Yes, indeed. Very different than Rafe. Accepting the organizer, he scrawled his information for her in his abrupt handwriting. "Can I have your info?" he asked. "And anything about steering clear of parents or something?" He smiled in resignation. "Obviously, they can't know."

"Steer clear of my family," she advised. "Their stupidity is probably contagious. They won't bother you so long as you don't make any sudden movements, and I think they can smell fear, but that's about it." She knelt to dig into her backpack again, and came up with a pen and a pad of post-it notes. With quick, neat handwriting, she jotted down her phone number and such for the young man. "That's my home number and my cell number," she added. "I can't have my cell on during school, but I check it between classes for messages, so you can leave one there if you want. I don't get much time to check my e-mail, so that's pretty slow, but everything else is fine. Is there anything else? Will I self-destruct in ten minutes from now or anything?"

"Not that I know of." Adam slipped the note into the back pocket of his baggy jeans. "Unless you do that as a regular thing, chere?"

She snorted. "Not so much, but then I don't become the incarnation of an Egyptian god every day, either, so I was just checking."

"My gods, this one has a brain in her." Ay, recovered from his sulk, trotted to her feet, looking up narrowly. "Very well, girl," he added shortly. "When are you going to go out with Geb?"

She raised an eyebrow at the badger, and flipped through the pages of her organizer. "Well . . . this week I'm good for Friday after six, Saturday, but only after five or so because I'm judging a debate until four-thirty, and any time on Sunday. Next week I have . . . um . . . " More flipping. "Wednesday night, but I think I have a test on Thursday, so that puts me at Saturday and then I'm booked again until the Thursday night after that." She beamed at the badger. "Your choice."

"You can't go until after dark anyway, girl." Ay settled back on his haunches. "But you will go out as soon as possible. You will learn your attacks and prove me wrong when I say that the new Kemets are useless, mewling babes."

"Hmm," Mathilde said, slightly disappointed that her schedule hadn't irked the badger more. Sounded like the other Kemets -- which was a weird word, really, she was going to have to look it up -- were lazy or lax or something. "Well, I'm good so long as it doesn't interfere with school." She shrugged.

"Very well." Turning, Ay squinted up at Adam. "You will take her out and teach her and do your duty, heathen."

The young man sighed. "Sure, Ay. I'll pay for the coffee at the end of it all, too."

"Coffee," Mathilde said dismissively, "I can pay for. So what days are you free? Do you need to check, and maybe call back later? Don't worry about calling late, I'll be up 'till around one-thirty tonight." She hoped it was one-thirty, anyway, or she'd need to sleep in on Saturday to catch up on her sleep.

Adam thought for a minute and then shrugged. "I don't work an evening shift until Friday so I'm yours whenever you want."

Consulting her organizer again, she squinted; it was getting dark. "Saturday's the next best day I have," she said straightforwardly, because nobody she knew ever had plans on a Saturday night.

"Saturday night? Well, I..." His words were cut off with an abrupt yelp. He looked down at Ay with a faint scowl. "Ay."

Ignoring his charge, the badger addressed Mathilde, "He'll be there. Pick a time and he will meet you here."

Sighing, Adam nodded. "Sure. I'll fix it."

"Okay," she said, completely missing the exchange between boy and badger. "For time . . . " She paused. She'd been planning on some homework Saturday night, but she could probably just move that to after whatever they were doing. "Six-thirty? Seven? It has to be dark, right?"

"Yeah," Adam agreed. "Less humiliation in general." An easy-going grin lit his face.

She laughed, though her voice was low. "Don't tell me they put you in a Kylie Minogue getup, too."

"Ah, chere, I get no shoes, eyeliner, and a skirt. I hit jackpot."

She snorted. "Just to make this all a little bit weirder, huh? Well, I have to go. My bus is coming soon. See you on Saturday, then?"

"Of course." Adam smiled and tucked his hands in his back pockets. "Saturday, here. Have a good week until then, huh?"

"You, too," she said, and flashed him a smile as she began to walk off.

"...Well, she has more promise than the others, I suppose," Ay grumbled finally, grudgingly admitting to a trace of less-than-loathing for Mathilde. "Though if she keeps waving that godsdamned book as if it means something, I'm going to have to bite her. She'll soon learn that nothing takes precedence over her holy mission." Rocking himself back onto four feet, Ay started walking. "Come on, you. You're not out of tonight."

"I know, I know." Adam shrugged good-naturedly and trotted after his guardian. "I can do a few hours tonight. Not tomorrow, though. If I'm now taking Saturday off, I need to make up the day somewhere at the cafe." Neatly, he snagged his football from the bush it had rolled under, dropped in the excitement, and balanced it against his hip. "We all have other lives, you know, so I don't want you coming down on her. Your people skills really need work."

"And your soft heart is going to get you killed, heathen child." Snorting, Ay moved faster ahead.

Adam shook his head and followed more closely. Yeah, but it'll help me sleep better at night until then...

She sat at the bus stop underneath the streeplamp's light, deep in thought, knees together but ankles far apart as she pondered the evening's unusual activity.

She thought about the power, so dry, so dark -- so hers, so very intrinsically hers that she couldn't imagine having lived so long without it. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to bring back that feeling.

And then she sat back against the bench with her eyes wide open, rooting herself firmly in reality. Okay, so this was weird, and pretty cool, but she couldn't let herself get distracted from important things -- like school. She had a feeling that this was going to cut in on her time a little bit, but she hoped that the badger -- and the boy -- understood that school came first.

Otherwise, she would have words with them. Long, angrily emphasized words, probably with a few shorter, nastier ones thrown in for good measure. She had essays to write, and clubs to chair, not to mention the million lab writeups she always had due because her physics teacher was a bastard -- this war thing was interesting, but hardly as interesting as Theory of Knowledge or the way the newspaper was going to break that story about grade-inflating next month.

But so long as none of it interfered with her schoolwork, it was kind of cool. Too bad she couldn't get volunteer hours for it, though.