Fortunately, Mi-chan returned before too long, ready to go. "First things first. On the off chance that we suddenly get attacked by someone, I don't want you defenseless. So I'm going to teach you to transform into Sailor Eryx."
"Are we likely to get attacked today?" Neko asked, hiding her excitement at becoming a Sailor Senshi like Mi-chan behind her surprise that her sister would start with this.
"With us, you never know," Mi-chan answered. She pulled something that looked to Neko like a magic wand out of nowhere. "Now somewhere within your katana space* is your henshin stick."
Neko stared at her. What the heck was she talking about? "Somewhere within my 'huh?' is my what?!"
"It looks like this," Mi-chan held up the silver and green wand, which had a sphere at the end with what looked like a double x on it, "except instead of the Electra symbol," she pointed to the XX, "it has a circle with a cross inside. And yours is blue and pink."
"Um, okay." Neko closed her eyes and pictured something like what Mi-chan had described and before she knew it, she had pulled hers out of she-didn't-know-where too. "Is that right?" she asked hopefully as she held out the wand with the symbol matching Mi-chan's description at the top, as if she would have randomly pulled out something similar but wrong.
Mi-chan grinned at her accomplishment. "You got it! Now hold it up and say 'Eryx Planet Power: Make Up.'"
Neko held it up obediently. "Eryx Planet Power: Make Up," she repeated.
Nothing.
Neko lowered her eyes. "Did I do it wrong?"
"No, no!" Mi-chan reassured her. "It's just� you're probably just not in tune with your element is all. We spent hours practicing it the first time. Let's see, how did Diana describe it to you?"
Neko watched Mi-chan try to dig up a memory Neko didn't have access to. "Okay, close your eyes." Neko did as she was told. "Feel how solid your feet are on the floor. Gravity pulls you down towards the earth. Forces all around you keep you in place on this planet. Do you feel them?"
Neko could. Suddenly, she understood what Mi-chan had been talking about with "her element." Gravity was a part of her. It flowed through her veins. She knew what to do now.
"Eryx Planet Power: Make Up!"
It seemed that the entire room had turned a sparkly blue. Pinks and whites and blues flew around her, and she began to grow dizzy as she seemed to spin. She felt her necklace turn into a choker, and as she looked down to see, she realized with embarrassment that she was naked. But no sooner did she notice than her body was covered in ribbons. A bright light blinded her, and suddenly she was in a sailor fuku, and the room returned to normal.
She ran over to the nearest mirror and checked out the outfit. She had been worried that the colors would be too girly, but she liked it! The shiny blue skirt and collar sparkled with touches of white and pink, and the deep pink bow was a beautiful shade. And while she was surprised by the height of the blue boots, they actually seem pretty sensible and were very cute!
"Look, Mi-chan! I did it!" She felt dumb to be so proud of herself for accomplishing something that should've been second nature, but she couldn't help it. It was really cool. But� "Does it always take that long?"
"No, it's not really that bad," Mi-chan assured her. "It just seems that way the first few times you do it. It's really like half a second, and no one else gets all those lights and music except you."
"Oh, good," Eryx said, relieved. That meant no one was watching her get all naked either. Not her siblings, not� Tenshi.
Her face turned red. She didn't want that pervert anywhere near her when she transformed. If she would kiss someone for no reason at all, who knew what she would do, knowing Neko had just been naked before her eyes. No, she didn't care what the circumstance was, Tenshi'd better be out of the line of sight when Neko transformed. Or detransformed.
Or was it "untransformed?" And how exactly did she do that again?
"I'll teach you how to go back in a sec. But your energy attacks are more important, so they're the next thing I want to go over. You have two. The first is 'Celestial Force,' and when you use that, you usually do some damage, plus you can drive the villain in some direction. Oh, you also can throw things into them, which can come in handy at times."
Eryx kind of understood. It must have been as if she was shifting something's gravity to move it. Where the energy attack-ish-ness of it, like Sailor Electra's attacks yesterday, came in, she wasn't quite certain�, but somehow it must work the same way, she supposed.
"Your second one is kinda different from everyone else's attacks." Mi-chan paused. "Hey, wait! Both of yours are different. That's not fair, why are you so special?!"
Eryx looked down at her pretty blue boots. "I don't know. I'm sorry," she apologized, worried that Mi-chan was actually angry.
"Oh, you silly! I'm not really mad at you!" Mi-chan cried in exasperation. Eryx was somewhat getting the idea that Mi-chan was never seriously mad at her. Mi-chan quickly went back to the subject at hand. "Uh, your other attack, 'Heart's Attraction,' does about as much damage as 'Celestial Force' but takes more energy to perform."
That didn't make sense. Why would she ever choose that one, then? "Then why-"
"Because no matter who makes one next, under whatever circumstances, the next power attack will be guaranteed to hit them. Sorta like a magnet."
"Really?" That actually sounded pretty cool. "And all I have to do is say, 'Heart's-'"
Mi-chan clapped her hand over her mouth. "Yes, you just have to say it. Which means saying it her right now is a good way to break Mom's favorite vase. Or to get your favorite sister killed. So before something like that actually happens, how about I teach you to go back to just being Neko."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Only part of Neko wanted to go back to just being Neko. She wanted to stop feeling helpless, to stop feeling like she didn't know anything. But she knew there were lots of things that others thought she would be better off not knowing, and things she already knew she wished she didn't know.
Mi-chan understood that, but she was one of those others. She didn't want to tell Neko about all the stuff they had gone through within the past year. Neko didn't need to know about all the betrayal, the possessions, the nightmares, the grief, and the pain they'd gone through. She didn't need to know how many times she had almost died, or about Mi-chan's major attempt to kill herself for her family. She didn't need to know all the suffering she had gone through just to keep her and Tenshi together, especially as she didn't like the blonde anymore.
She didn't need to know all that, Mi-chan kept telling herself.
But she knew that the hard questions would come, and that Neko would eventually have to introduced to everything that had happened to the two of them
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