#001: SUNSHINE BLINDS YOU
-Drinking, Cheating, Smoking, Nudity-

It was a beautiful day in Nerima. But who the hell cares? This isn't a Ranma 'fic. I do not care what happens to him. Or his weird friends. Nor do I care that I'm breaking the fourth wall in the first paragraph of the story. If you can't deal with it, go somewhere else.

Hey, wait, where's everyone going? Hey, stick around! Guys, there'll be fanservice in this story! Yeah, that's right, gratuitous fanservice. Nudity. And girls, you'll get to see something sweet, like Artemis and Luna doing little kitty kisses with their noses. Or maybe I'll give each and every person who figures out my middle name from the various clues hidden in this story five bucks. Really.

Good. Now sit down and listen. This is the tale of Farley Okoru. Farley was a West Slovakian exchange student who just happened to move to Japan in 1993. More specifically, she moved to a suburb of Tokyo known as Juuban. She ended up attending a certain school... with five other very special young girls. Can you guess where this is going?

As an exchange student, Farley attended Juuban Junior High School. (HA! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) She was not the only one, however. In total, there were about a hundred and seventy-five other exchange students, mostly from America, Canada or other northern nations. One by one, all the other exchange students became Sailor Senshi, or Tuxedo Mask/Moonlight Knight templates as Farley watched in confusion.

She had no idea what was going on.

While Sailor Earth, Sailor Terra, Sailor Prospectus, Sailor Sol, Sailor Sun, Sailor Strata, Sailor Faery, Sailor Scorpitron, Super Sailor Planetary Graviton Field, Sailor Stanchion, Sailor Omega Comet, Sailor British Columbia, Sailor Jem, Sailor Bubble, Sailor Spider, Sailor Batgirl with Bows, Sailor Tachyon, Sailor Cruise Line, Sailor Duck Hunt, Sailor Princess, Sailor Prince, the Sailor formerly known as Prince, Sailor Cute, and Sailor Kitten discovered their powers, Farley's mind boggled.

It didn't help that she went to school with Tuxedo Terminator, Mercury Jacket Ninja Mask, Mars Ski-Mask Mask, Jupiter Tuxedo Apron, the Venus Motorcycle Helmet Knight, the Moonlight Atom Boy, Masked Tuxedo Samurai, Cyber Ronin Cape Mask, Impressively Armored Cyber Space Knight, and many others. These characters inevitably met up with the original Senshi one by one and had what might loosely be called, if you were feeling charitable, adventures.

This didn't happen to Farley. Farley was still clueless. She didn't speak Japanese very well, and she was really confused for a while until she found out that most of the other students were actually speaking English. Which she didn't know either.

Well, after a few years, Farley learned English. She was in junior college, but unfortunately she'd managed once again to get into the same school as the original Sailor Senshi and the other Sailors, Knights and Masks. Also unfortunately, she still didn't speak fluent Japanese. But she was working on it.

By this time, the massive and colorful ranks of Sailors, Knights and Masks had thinned out slightly. This was due to heroic sacrifice, mysterious disappearance, the fact that, after all, when you're an exchange student you do eventually have to go back to your own country, and, well, some people hadn't finished their fanfics, the losers. I myself have never not finished a fanfic... or used a double negative. Oh yeah? Shut up! Yes, you! What the hell are you still doing here? No way you get the five bucks, now shoo. No it is not Rumplestiltskin! SHOO!

In the meantime, Farley had filled out from her scrawny Slovakian youth and was now long-haired, leggy and quite lovely. In fact she was all these things and more. She was over 18. Which makes all the ecchi stuff in the next paragraph quite legal, unless you're in New Hampshire, under 16, on AOL, easily offended, or have a heart condition.

Oh, what the hell. I don't feel like it any more. And since I don't, neither did Farley. So, she rejected the advances of the civilian identities of Tuxedo Scarf, then Masked Goggled Spectacled Mask and finally Sailor Buzzcut, and left the downtown Tokyo bar where she had gone to drink her troubles away.

"WHY?" Farley screamed at the smoggy Tokyo sky. Then she realized that not only was this course of action causing people to look at her funny, she didn't really have a reason for it.

Farley got on the subway and went home. Since West Slovakia, being a silly fanfic convention, had ceased to exist shortly after she'd left its borders, she'd had to find herself a dirt cheap apartment in the best part of town, fully furnished and with utilities included. She paid for it by becoming a hack-and-slash fluff writer, sketching pictures of the Star-Spangled Sailor or the Kilted Knight for the Tokyo Tattler. She usually included a brief biography or story, most of which was made up, but it was usually more interesting than the real thing.

Farley's one dream (it's required that a fanfic character must have some sort of goal, frustrating this goal is what we call conflict, it's what makes a story interesting. Not that this one is or anything. But now maybe it will be, because of Farley's goal. Being frustrated and all that. And after being deprived of the sensuous advances of Tuxedo Scarf, Masked Goggled Spectacled Mask, and Sailor Buzzcut, on the mere whim of the author, believe me, Farley is frustrated. What was I saying?...)

Oh yeah. Farley's one great, shining glorious dream was to be a mangaka- a manga writer and artist. In her spare time, which was vast, she drew the adventures of a few beans and a lost penny in the bottom of a boot, which she called Farleyworld. Every now and then, just out of habit, she caught herself drawing a fuku or a mask on one of the beans. That was when she usually got up out of her chair. Fingers twitching, she would go to a bar, flirt, drink, and end the evening with a scream of frustration aimed at the smoggy sky. Then she would go home and walk around her apartment completely naked, smoking a cigarette, wondering how she would look with a tattoo of several beans and a penny. The boot would probably be pushing it too far, she thought, and then she usually realized that the whole thing was ridiculous and went and ate a box of white chocolate.

In case you didn't notice, she was naked and that was the fanservice. Oh, and I thought about it, and I decided that if you are sticking around for the Artemis and Luna sweetness, you might as well leave now because that's not going to happen. Farley throws up enough as it is.

Speaking of projectile vomiting, Farley probably drank too much. But you could hardly blame her. Half the students and most of the young professors at Juuban Junior College were Sailors, Knights, or Masks. They were always finding excuses to slip out of classes for some reason. It was giving the whole place a bad name, which made Farley very, very worried about getting a real job after she graduated. She worried about graduating, in fact, since she never seemed to get the assignments right, or on time, or have a chance to talk to one of the teachers before they grabbed a stick, brooch, henshin pen, wand, staff, necklace, bracelet, enchanted dagger, glass slipper or lightsaber and left the building in a rather large hurry. It was obviously no good asking the other students either, since they were either shouting transformation phrases or unconscious on the floor.

Sometimes Farley chased after the heroes with her Polaroid and sketchbook. Other times she amused herself by having fun with the possessions of certain Sailors, Knights or Masks... and the Bunsen burners in the chemistry lab. This helped her deal with her stress. So did her smoking habit. However, neither helped as much as the day she realized that teachers who were Sailors, Knights or Masks would often leave their grade books unattended when they left the classroom on some lame excuse or another.

Farley's grades improved.

Well, enough backstory. Would you like to see an average scene in the life of Farley Okoru? All right, then. Here we go. Watch closely.

It was a bright sunny morning. Farley was walking to school- very, very carefully. In all Farley's years of going to school with Sailors, Knights and Masks, she had been trampled by screaming late Sailors at least... well, about three or four times a morning, actually. It had not improved when college started and some of the Sailors got their own cars. As time passed, Farley had developed quite a nervous tic and a habit of throwing herself flat against the nearest wall at the sound of pounding feet or any sort of high-pitched wail. This tended to make her a fun person to invite to parties.

Anyway, this certain day she happened to find a hedgehog lying in the gutter, black eyes looking up at her pathetically. Farley immediately felt a sense of kinship with this bedraggled beast and picked it up. She knew that by doing so, she was ending that last sentence with a preposition, but who cared anyway? She dried it off, petted it, and then with a horrible sinking feeling noted the tiny lowercase letter 's' on its forehead.

Farley's cigarette fell out of her mouth. She whimpered some West Slovakian obscenities, including the unprintable adjective 'macek,' lifted the hedgehog to eye level and screamed pleadingly, "You're not mine! You don't belong to me! I've never seen you before and I'm usually not nice to animals at all!"

The hedgehog stared at her. "No, er, look, I belong to Sailor Scallion. Could you put me down? I was eating, there were some nice bugs in that gutter."

Farley tossed the hedgehog back into the gutter with a splash and began jogging down the street to school, feeling like some the punch line of some cosmic joke. She ignored the hedgehog's parting cry of "Look, could you just forget I talked...? Thanks..."

It was true. Farley didn't like animals, especially small cute anthropomorphic ones with symbols on their foreheads. Sailor Batgirl with Bows had had a bat (with a bow, no less) as her guardian before going back to Gotham, and the Sailor formerly known as Prince still had his stupid frog. Most of the other Sailors, Knights and Masks had cats or kittens or puppies or wolf cubs or cute little birds or minks or stinking ferrets or some other vermin. They would slink around Juuban High School, and then in later years Juuban Junior College, in little suspicious, beady-eyed, flea-infested packs.

Farley hated them. Stupid little jumped-up fuzzballs. She hated the fact that they didn't seem to have any use, yet all the Sailors, Knights and Masks each had to have one. She hated when she had to draw them for the Tattler and give them stupid, cute names. She hated that blank "I am just a dumb lower life form" look the little buggers always gave you when you caught them talking...

"Stupid, stupid animals," thought Farley, fuming down the street. She pulled another cigarette out of her purse, lit it, and sucked in the comforting nicotine. Continuing on to her first class of the day at college, she appeared to be nothing more than a normal young woman, perhaps on a very bad day, perhaps just cranky... but Farley knew that, if anything, she was not normal. At least not for this mythos-infested reality. She stubbed her cigarette out, a snarl on her face, and began the walk up the concrete steps that fronted Juuban Junior College.

* * END CHAPTER ONE * *

Go on to Chapter 2 of Farley's Tale

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