[Fic] "Camouflage the Question" -- Sailor Moon
gramarye1971 said: For the 'It was a Decoy / Feint / Distraction' prompt: Sailor Moon, with one of the senshi remembering that Usagi has that Disguise Pen and actually using it for something?
Note: This is about the genesis of a feint rather than its execution, but eh, details. It's set in the Death Buster arc at an indeterminate point between Kaolinite and Eudial's deaths. I'm not entirely sure what version of canon has the most space for this detour, so call that aspect indeterminate as well. *shrug* (1,500 words)
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly tweaked AO3 version is now up!]
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Camouflage the Question
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Days without Minako and Makoto in school tended to be quiet, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Usagi could catch up with Naru and Umino more easily when she didn't have to juggle two different sets of in-jokes and assumptions. Also, Ami tended to talk more when it was just the two of them. She still had a low-grade fear of people mocking and ostracizing her, which ebbed when she had time to gather her thoughts without the other senshi jumping into her pauses and redirecting the conversation to their own interests.
Usagi was the first to admit that she had a tendency to take over conversations, but she could listen to Ami explain cutting-edge biological research or the history and chemistry of oil paints for hours, even if most of it flowed in one ear and out the other. Ami had a nice voice, and she was adorable when she got excited about science or art. It was a shame she didn't get more chances to share her enthusiasm.
Today, though, Usagi was fairly sure Ami wanted to talk about senshi business rather than her father's latest art show or an article she'd read in her mother's professional journals -- and specifically wanted to talk when the other senshi weren't around. Ami had spent all of lunch frowning distractedly, in between sending Usagi considering looks, and none of Usagi's conversational prompts had gotten more than a basic response. But whatever her big idea was, Ami hadn't put her thoughts in order before afternoon classes started. Since she refused to pass notes like Minako and Makoto, Usagi had been stuck itching with curiosity until school finally let out.
"Ami-chan! What did you want to ask?" she asked as soon as the school door swung shut behind them, releasing the students of Azabu-Juban from the bondage of education for a few sweet and precious hours.
Ami twitched, then laughed. "Of course you know I have a question. I must have been awfully obvious."
Usagi shrugged, because that was true but she didn't want to make Ami feel bad. "Well, you got me awfully curious! So what is it? Have you thought of something we can do to fight the Death Busters better?"
Ami bit her lip and shifted her bag of juku workbooks in her arms. "Maybe. From a certain perspective. Do you still have that disguise pen?"
Usagi wrinkled her forehead at the seeming change of subject. "I think so? Luna never took it back, but I might have lost it behind my dresser or in the bathroom cupboards. Why?"
Ami tugged Usagi over to sit on the broad rim of a movie memorabilia shop's decorative planter, where they could put their heads close and talk with less chance of being overheard. "I was thinking... the problem we always run into is lack of knowledge. We have to wait for our enemies to get close enough to winning that they reveal their full plans, instead of being able to attack them when they're still weak and disorganized. And when you use the pen, it doesn't just change your outfit, right? You get the knowledge you need to convince other people the disguise is real."
Ami looked sideways and her next words came out very low and fast. "So I thought, what if I borrowed your pen and disguised myself as Kaolinite or Eudial? Under controlled circumstances, without the distraction of a fight, I might be able to learn--"
"Absolutely not," Usagi said. "I never tried to disguise myself as a magical person. What if mixing two magics meant that you turned into a Death Buster for real instead of just pretending? I already lost you all once in this lifetime, and I'm not doing it again."
"That's highly unlikely, and even so, you could purify--"
"No."
Usagi tried not to abuse her position as the princess, but sometimes she was grateful that when she put her foot down, her friends would listen. They might argue about it! Which was good; any ruler who stopped listening to her people had taken a terribly wrong path. But in the end, they trusted her judgment.
And so she watched Ami sigh, and agree, and slide her suggestion into her vast mental folder of discarded ideas.
Still, even if turning into a villain was out of the question, they might be able to use the disguise pen for something else. And didn't Minako have a compact that could also make disguises...? A faint possibility nagged at the edge of Usagi's mind, and she frowned as she tried to wrap her mental hands around it.
A trio of their classmates barged noisily past them into the shop, and the thought slithered away rather than solidifying. But it left another possibility in its wake. "Um," Usagi said.
Ami looked up, curiosity driving disappointment off her face. "Yes?"
"Well, I still say turning into a villain is a bad idea and I won't stand for it. But we could use the disguise pen for other things. It's a problem that I'm the only one who can cleanse the Daimons, right?"
Ami nodded.
"So... what if we used my pen and Mina-chan's compact, and one of you pretended to be me and I pretended to be someone else, so we could catch the next Daimon by surprise?" Usagi punched her right fist into her left palm by way of demonstration. (She thought Makoto might be proud that she'd remembered to keep her thumb on the outside this time.) "Pow, just like that! We might even get Eudial, too."
Ami blinked. "Oh. Yes. That might--"
"And if my pen and Mina-chan's compact really can imitate other people's magic as well as their clothes and some things they know, maybe we could have three of us use the Moon Spiral Heart Attack at the same time! Wouldn't that be amazing, Ami-chan?"
Or even just give Usagi a day off from being a senshi, now and then. She didn't resent the fighting, precisely -- it would be ungrateful to complain about having the power to save the world -- but some days she got so tired.
Ami nodded, but her expression looked awfully like the one she wore when she reviewed Usagi's homework (at least on days when Usagi had been too busy with other things to read the lessons carefully). Drat. No days off, then. And it had been such a nice daydream, too.
"Unfortunately, I doubt the disguise items are powerful enough to make a functional copy of the Spiral Heart Moon Rod," Ami said. "Using them for misdirection sounds like a viable strategy, though. We might even be able to capture Eudial and interrogate her, which would solve our lack of information without any risk of an unpleasant personality overlay accompanying a disguise transformation."
"Mmm. Maybe!" Usagi said. She wasn't sure they could hold Eudial if they caught her, or that the Witch would be interested in talking. And interrogation sounded like a dangerously slippery slope. But they could cross those bridges when they got there, she supposed. In the meantime...
The slithery thought poked its head up above the mental grass again. This time, she managed to pin it down before it could slink off.
"Oh!" Usagi leapt to her feet and grabbed Ami's shoulders in excitement. "Ami-chan, listen, I just had the best idea. It's too dangerous to disguise ourselves as villains, but what if, the next time we run into Eudial, one of us disguised herself as an ordinary woman who looks like Kaolinite, and makes provoking remarks? That might surprise Eudial into letting something slip about their plans or their powers, and the rest of us could use the distraction to sneak up and purify her without a big mess! So you'd get your information, we'd get an easy fight, and if more Death Busters turn up later on, we could just do the whole thing over again each time!"
Ami paused halfway through standing and brushing off her uniform skirt. "I-- think I'd want to run that past Minako first, since she's the one who'd have the best chance of imitating Kaolinite. But yes. That might really work." She smiled.
Usagi beamed in response. "Yay! Now come on -- we deserve a reward for coming up with a great new plan, and what's a better reward than ice cream and games?" She wrapped her hand around Ami's elbow and tugged her friend around a corner, off the route to her juku and toward the Crown Fruits Parlor and game center instead.
"But, my studies--"
"--can wait for a few hours," Usagi said firmly. "If you really need to think about academics, you can explain asymptotes to me because I listened to every word of our lecture this afternoon and I don't think any of them were actually in Japanese. But first, ice cream. It's a beautiful day and we might have just saved the world, again. Let yourself enjoy it!"
Laughing, Ami let herself be diverted.
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End of Fic
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I have no idea why that fic took so long to write -- it was like my brain just jammed up every time I opened the file -- but it's done, it's cute, and I can move on to other projects. :)
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