Notes: A Minako & Artemis fic set between the Sailor V manga & Sailor Venus' first appearance in the main Sailor Moon manga.

Yesterday and Tomorrow

It's been a long, dull summer since she got back from China, and Minako has just about had enough.

"Artemis," she wails, "can't I just make a comeback as V-chan? I was super-cute. And I was great at kicking people's arses."

But Artemis, busy with important cat stuff, just twitches an ear at her and pretends he hasn't heard. No-one can ignore you like a cat.

To be honest, Minako isn't sure if she actually wants to be Sailor V again or not anyway. Sailor V never really existed, she was just a temporary cover story, and anyway, V was alone and couldn't really expect that to change. If you didn't count Artemis. And Natsuna. And the boss.

But now she isn't even really Sailor V any more and she isn't Venus yet either, because Venus has friends and a princess and, Minako darkly suspects, may actually be competent.

She definitely doesn't feel competent. Or not competent enough, anyway.

She just wants to kick something.

You're meant to play to your strengths. Right?

She searches and trains, and searches some more. But she can't let Artemis get too smug, either - he's completely unbearable if he thinks she's actually focusing. Mina, I'm so moved! Mina, think what a positive influence I've been on you! Mina, doesn't it feel so much better to work hard and feel the results!

So she says,

"I think I'll start a band! That would totally be a great way to find the others, right?"

Artemis' tail twitches slightly.

"Yeah!" she continues. "I mean, I could be a megastar, then everyone would have to notice me! I bet the princess would go for that. I could sing all about my love for her and-"

"That," Artemis snaps, "is the stupidest plan I have ever heard."

"Hey, fish breath," Minako says with a grin, "I don't see you coming with a better one."

"I do not have fish breath," Artemis mutters.

"You so do," Minako shoots back, and no-one's plans make any kind of progress for the rest of the day. It's war.

"Hey, Artemis," Minako says, "am I really going to be Sailor Venus?"

"Hmm," Artemis murmurs, and burrows deeper down into the blankets on her bed. "Of course. What's this all of a sudden?"

"It was all so clear right then. You know, when Ace... that stuff. I knew exactly. Everything. I knew who I was. And who everyone else was"

"And?"

"And now it's all fuzzy again. Like, there's this princess, right? But I can't see her face any more. I can't guard her if I can't see her, can I."

"You will," Artemis says in a low, decided half-purr, and for once his certainty is kind of reassuring, not that she'd actually tell him so. "Now go to sleep."

"OK, OK," Minako says. "But I'd better not wake up 'cuz you're trying to eat my feet again."

"It was only once," Artemis mutters. "And I can't help it. I'm a cat. It's not my fault if some people can't keep their toes to themselves."

She knows the shape of the story now but she really wants to see the players. It's like shadow-puppets are acting the whole thing out for her: definite forms, completely faceless.

They're coming closer. Artemis says it, and she can feel it, really, if she's honest, but it's so frustrating, the indefinite waiting and wondering. She isn't patient, she wants soon to change to now, closer to here already.

"I think I can be Sailor V sometimes still," she says. "I mean, I can't be Venus in public yet, and when I'm V people tell me stuff."

Mostly things like now you will die, ahahahaha, admittedly. But what can you do. It beats homework and it beats waiting.

Besides, when she was V-chan she used to meet way more cute boys.

And kill way more cute boys, Artemis would say, because Artemis is a pain in the arse who likes to be accurate. What the hell is with that.

Anyway, details.

She knows she's only distracting herself with that line of reasoning - cute boys aren't really a thing she can waste time thinking about right now, but on the other hand, she really is meant to be a soldier of justice. Injustice really hasn't gone away just because she's sitting in between identities; even if they've decided that it's not time for Sailor Venus to make a public appearance and she isn't really Sailor V any more she has to do something, right?

She'll go mad if she doesn't get out there soon. Even Artemis can admit that's true.

V-chan is making a temporary comeback, just in time for the release of the new version of her game.

"But I flat-out refuse to let you start a band," Artemis points out, unhelpful as ever.

"Yeah yeah," Minako says. Well whatever. It's not like she has anyone to start a band with. Artemis as a back-up singer? Totally not cute.

It doesn't actually help very much. If anything the worry of anticipation is stronger when she's out as V, and the sense of dissonance or resonance or whatever it's called is stronger. There are people who are waiting for her, although they may not even know it yet. They're somewhere nearby. She could walk past them on the street, borrow their notes in school, buy a drink from them at a café, and she wouldn't have a clue. But at least now she feels like she's doing something. It feels real in a way that research doesn't. She's been spending too much time at the arcade. Or under the arcade, or whatever.

So Sailor V stops robberies, saves small animals and generally makes a nuisance of herself.

But there isn't a sign of the dark kingdom.

She wishes she knew what they were up to. They're not just sitting around waiting - are they? But she doesn't ask Artemis, because that would mean admitting that she's worried.

They're in the base while Artemis runs all his daily scans for any unusual activity, and though he always says she doesn't need to wait for him, she still doesn't trust him not to get, like, kidnapped on the way home. That would suck. She'd never know if he'd found anything.

He's a good looking cat, even if he is kind of a git. It's definitely a risk.

Not that she'd care. Except it would be super inconvenient. Yeah.

OK, maybe she isn't even convincing herself with that one. Oh well. Anyway, she has to keep an eye on him. He knows stuff, but he's still basically a cat.

She sighs and turns to the screens showing the Sailor V game, notices that someone's playing it. They're doing... OK, she supposes. Not that great. Not as well as she does, obviously. But nobody does very well at the Sailor V game.

Flicking over to the camera view she takes a look at who's playing. A girl about her age with long blonde hair in a pair of knots. She's really concentrating, eyebrows pressed down in hard lines.

"Artemis," Minako says uncertainly, "haven't I seen that girl somewhere before...?"

"Well, she's always here," Artemis says, "you've probably seen her on your way in."

"No," Minako says. "I don't think that's it..." but she doesn't know what it is, what the connection is that her brain is trying to make.

"She seems to be just a-" Artemis begins, and then he stops sharply, stares hard at something else caught by the camera.

"What?" Minako asks, but Artemis is shaking himself and licking furiously at his sides, and by the time she looks around both the girl and whatever it was Artemis saw are gone.

Artemis doesn't want to talk about it.

"I was probably wrong anyway," he mutters.

"Hey Mina," Artemis says in a low hiss. "Mina!"

Minako jerks awake and realises that she's been sleeping with the side of her face against a control panel. "Uh," she says, and then, "yes! I'm awake!"

Too many late nights. She came straight here from school, and she went to school on an hour and a half of sleep.

Artemis doesn't even make a smartass comment though. He's staring at a screen, clicking furiously away at buttons. Maybe it's because she's half asleep but she's struck all over again by just how weird it is to see a cat typing.

"I just picked up something strange. I think maybe I've found someone. But it's hard to say..."

Oh please let it be something. Let them have found something they're meant to know about, even if it's an enemy not a friend. Minako leans in next to Artemis, stares at the screen with him, though it doesn't really mean anything to her. Glances over at him, looking for a clue.

All she gets is that Artemis is kind of adorable when he's this concentrated, little cat ears flattening themselves down, nose somehow more pointed.

"There!" Artemis says at last, and Minako almost jumps out of her chair, she's so on edge. "Let's go!"

They run out into the evening streets, following the signal. It leads them into a quiet suburban housing area, calm and still and a completely unlikely place. But it's probably right. And there's the house, the one the energy came from, lying quiet, half the windows dark.

As they run up towards it she thinks she sees a black cat sitting at a lit window. But no people, not yet.

"Carefully," Artemis hisses, "we don't want to show ourselves."

Above them a crescent moon is shining, a faint silver sliver behind the glow of street-lights. And Minako thinks, suddenly, inexplicably:

I'm going to see my future. Any moment now.

It's right there, waiting.

They watch Sailor Moon.

"I don't remember her," Minako says, "but d'you think she could be..."

She trails off.

It seems far fetched, but they can take on other identities, look different, forget and change. She should know. She's done it.

"...the princess?" Artemis finishes.

They stare at each other, and back out at the scene unfolding between Sailor Moon and her opponent. The opponent's style she recognises, anyway: dark kingdom all over. You wait for ages for something to happen and then it's all going on at once.

"Huh," she says.

"There was no Sailor Moon before, anyway," Artemis says. "Back then."

Minako turns her focus away from him, back to the girl she may or may not be meant to live to protect. It... doesn't feel wrong, exactly.

But princess or not, Sailor Moon is definitely in need of some training.

She can fix that.

That night she lets go of Sailor V for good. She tries on her new self, stands in her new costume in front of the mirror, admires the linked hearts in her belt. It suits her, the whole thing. It's kind of more stylish, more sophisticated. Well, she is the goddess of love and beauty now! Or something like that. Of course she has to look good.

It's not time to make a move in public yet, but she's got someone to lead now, even if they won't know it for a while to come. It makes her feel better, bigger, more patient because she's more important. A shadow role is better than not knowing your role at all.

She has someone to guard.

And that feels completely right.

[end]