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Episode #104:  First Days
Reel 1
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	Not once looking back, Jennifer Sakachi entered the doors of the
Tsukino State College, commonly referred to as the School.  One of the
assistant admissions directors was waiting inside to escort Jen to the
office.

	"I bet you're excited, huh?" asked the AAD.  A large portion of her
job was to get students used to the School, and research had found that the
first few hours were the hardest.  However, her own personal research had
shown that most students were sufficiently intelligent to see right through
this.  No-one, however, had clued upper management onto this, and so she was
left to do her useless acclimation job.

	Jen peered at the woman's name tag.  Naoko Yazama.  "Well,
Yazama-san, I have to say that I'm pretty nervous.  Which you're trying to
alleviate, no doubt."

	Great, though Naoko.  Oh for the past three years on this count. 
"It *is* my job, you know."

	"And I have no doubts that you do it well."

	"My supervisor would beg to differ."

	They chuckled.  "Anyway," continued Naoko as they reached the office
door, "We just have some papers to sign, and you'll be all set.  I hope
you'll find that life here is blissfully peaceful."

	The deafening explosion outside gave lie to that statement.

	A number of things happened simultaneously.  Naoko wheeled about to
see what had happened.  Jen dove for the floor.  A fire alarm began to ring. 
The ornate windows which Naoko was turning towards shattered into millions
of tiny glass daggers.  An eerily calm voice said, "Silence Wall!"

	Then things began to happen sequentially.

	Having had enough time for events to register, Jen screamed in
terror.  She could only hope that these sorts of things weren't a common
occurrence at the School.  Otherwise, she would give some serious thought to
returning to Mizuno.  Then she looked above her, and could only gasp.

	In a similar vein, Naoko began to regret having turned around.  A
hell of a lot of glass shards were coming for her, and she knew in some
corner of her brain, that even if by some miracle she got her hands up in
time, she wouldn't have a prayer of coming out of it alive.  She closed her
eyes and waited for the worst.

	In the end, there were two things that tipped her off to the fact
that the worst wasn't coming, at least not yet.  The first was the
extraordinarily long time the worst was taking to arrive.

	The second was also the first coherent thing Jen managed to say
after the explosion.

	"SAILOR SATURN!"

	Naoko opened her eyes to see a veritable pile of glass on the floor
a few meters away.  Directly in front of it was a shimmering wall of
nothing.

	Just nothing.  A faint wavering in the air, that seemed to delineate
a border between air and air, that nevertheless had to have been solid
enough to prevent the glass from striking her.  She gulped, and finally
Jen's words got to her.  She stood and turned.

	Sailor Saturn stood before them.  Silently, the black-haired senshi
let fall her glaive.  The wall-that-wasn't-a-wall disappeared.

	"Sailor Saturn," said Naoko, bowing in a manner Jen didn't notice as
perfunctory.  "I hadn't been told to expect you."

	Jen was far more enthusiastic.  "Sailor Saturn!  Why are you here? 
Are you teaching a class?"

	Saturn merely regarded them for a moment, then spoke.  "We had
received word that an attack might come here today.  So I was sent."

	"WHAT?"  Naoko was instantly furious.  "You mean that you knew this
would happen, and not one of the administration was notified?  How dare
you-"

	"I would remind you," said Saturn in a calm tone, "that all
planetary senshi are part of the 'administration,' and that furthermore it
was Sailor Mars's prerogative that you not be informed so as not to cause a
panic."

	Naoko gestured to the shattered window, through which they could
hear sirens.  "'Not cause a panic?'  *That's* what your complacency got
you!"

	"With all due respect," said Saturn in a calm voice, "we have been
receiving threats for the past six months.  At each one, we have dispatched
a sailor senshi to insure safety.  And-"

	"Oh, fat lot of good *that* did!"

	"If you would please refrain from interrupting-"

	The two carried on, with Jen watching from the sidelines.  She got
the impression that this sort of argument went on a lot at the School. 
While its job was to produce senshi, the school was generally run and taught
by civilians.  Therefore, the civilians and senshi were often in
disagreements such as the one she saw.  Deciding to check on the explosion,
she walked over to the shattered doors and peered out.

	And promptly wished that she hadn't.

***

	Two hours later, she was still shaking.  Naoko tried to talk to her.

	"Look Jen, you've got to snap out of it.  Heaven knows that it was
bad, but-"

	"Bad?  BAD?  Kami-sama, four people were ROASTED in there!  Burned
alive!  By another human being!  And you want me to snap out of it?!?"

	Naoko's voice hardened yet again.  "Yes, I do.  And you know why? 
Because you're the finest specimen of humanity I have seen pass through the
doors in all my years here.  You have the potential to be one of the
greatest senshi ever, and I don't exaggerate lightly.

	"But with greatness comes responsibility, and a requirement to step
above the rest.  When you get your fuku, you will have to face the
possibility of dying at any moment to protect the nation.  And if you don't
die, the chances are damn good that someone you love will.  So get this
weakness out of the way *now*!"

	Jen shook herself; as a student of history, she knew intellectually
that emotional maturity was one of the things the School was supposed to
bring out in its students.  But in her heart . . . four people had died, and
while it was one thing to read about such things, it was another thing
altogether to see the burned corpses.

	"Yes . . . I guess you're right."  She swallowed, trying to return to
normalcy.  "Where are those papers?"

	"Papers?  But I thought . . . fine, here they are."

	She shoved over a pile of oddly flattened handlinks.  Jen began
signing and DNA-printing them.

	"I must confess that things weren't supposed to be like this.  We've
got seventy girls who are torn up about this, four who flat out changed
their minds about coming here to study, and the last one . . . well, we
shan't dwell on that."

	Jen looked up from the stack of forms, pausing in the middle of
signing the agreement to the student code.  "'Shan't?'"

	Naoko somehow managed a chuckle.  "Just a little thing I picked up
when I visited the Palace once." She poked at a full-fledged handlink a bit
and peered at the results, but her mind was elsewhere.  "Okay, they say that
it's okay for me to give the grand tour now.  That is, if you still want
it?"

	"Please?"

	"Very well.  Are you finished?  Ah, good, right this way."

***

	"And this is the library," said Naoko with a flourish, gesturing
towards the cavernous space they were inside.  In keeping with Jen's
theories on the love for books, the walls and a good chunk of floor space
were taken by full bookshelves.  Never mind that any computer terminal or
handlink in Crystal Tokyo could pull up any page of any of these books at
any time; people still needed the reassurance of paper and binding, of
something heavy to curl up around.

	"It's very nice," she said in reply.  "But there's one other thing
that's been bothering me."

	"Yes?"

	"Well, it's just . . . look at the size of the place!  You could fit
my house in here and have room to spare!  And the gym was even bigger!  But
from outside, the place doesn't look bigger than Mizuno High.  Why?"

	Naoko laughed; this question had bothered her when she first came
here, too.  "It's a bit of magic, I'm afraid."

	"Magic?"  Magic was still an unknown quantity in Crystal Tokyo. 
Generally, its use was limited to defense, and then only by the senshi.

	"Yes, magic.  Pocket magic, I think they call it.  You know, the
ability to pull a scepter out of nowhere?  It's an application of the same
phenomenon."

	"But . . . the energy expenses necessary to maintain a pocket this
large . . . ." From what little Jen understood of it (and make no mistake,
science was not one of her fortes), the energy required to maintain a
dimensional pocket was directly proportional to sum of the sizes of the
objects within it.  A small pocket containing, say, a henshin rod and a
handlink, which was the most that most senshi carried in their pockets,
could be maintained indefinitely on the inherent energy produced by the
Senshi.

	"The Queen takes care of it."

	"How?" asked Jen sharply.

	"Oh, she just does."  Jen filed this under the category of blind
faith in technology and decided to think about it later.  For now, they
were moving on to the residence halls.

***

	As night fell, they entered a two story brick building that
outwardly had nothing to distinguish itself, aside from a plaque beside the
door.  The yellow sign proclaimed that they were entering Blake Hall, a fact
Jen felt she could have done without.

	"This is Blake Hall," said Naoko, echoing the sign, "which is a
pretty typical example of a residence hall here. There are only two of them,
anyway; McKinley is across that tiny grassy strip we call the Little Mall."

	As they walked down the corridor, Jen saw many things that would
have looked familiar to a college student of the latter twentieth century:
message boards attached to doors, study lounges, bulletin boards announcing
activities, a small kitchen.  They stopped at room 103.

	"Marvin, please open the door."

	"Marvin?"

	The door opened.

	"Please come inside," said Naoko, gesturing.  "Marvin is the name of
the School's AI," she explained as they walked inside the room.  While the
corridor did not differ significantly from a 1990s dorm hallway, the room
bore little resemblance.

	"Wow," breathed Jen.  The room had to be twice as big as her room
back home.  The two beds were at opposite walls, with the wall facing the
door having a window and two desks, where computer terminals would
undoubtedly be plugged in.  In a corner was the door to the bathroom, and in
the other corner was a closet that, upon further inspection, turned out to
be half as large as the room itself.  In the middle was a round table, upon
which were stacked books and bags.  Similar items were on the left-hand bed.

	"The stuff on the table is your roommate's.  Name's uh . . . Ereera
or something.  Dash it . . . Marvin, what's her name?"

	A totally flat and emotionless voice answered.  "Eileen Pearcy.  Age
nineteen, nationality North American Confederation, Northeastern district, state
of Pennsylvania, of mixed German and French ancestry-"

	"That's quite enough, really Marvin."  Naoko turned apologetically
to Jen.  "He has a tendency to go off at the mouth sometimes.  Apparently
he once started reciting pi and couldn't stop.  I wasn't here then, 
but . . . oh my!  Look at the time!"

	"Time?"

	"It's evening already!  And you'll be wanting to sleep, won't you?"

	"Well, I suppose-"

	"Good.  Irene . . . Ivy . . . well, she should be here tomorrow. 
She's a special case; she's still in Pennsylvania and just sent her
belongings ahead of her.  Anyway, off to bed with you."

	And with that, Jen was left in a rather spacious room that she
apparently would have all to herself for the night.  She was still rather
surprised at the way Naoko had transformed from a bustling tour guide to an
overbearing mother, but that, as it was so often said, was life.

	She stepped into the bathroom, experimented with the shower a bit,
and went back into the main room, where she rummaged through her things. 
Looking at the clock, she saw that it was indeed rather late; in fact, she
could feel a few yawns coming on.  Too tired to unpack everything, she just
pulled out a robe and some nightclothes and re-entered the shower.

	Some minutes later found her back in the main room, inspecting the
closet.  Inside were some school uniforms that she could only assume were to
be hers; she hadn't seen any other students yet.  Pulling one out for closer
inspection, Jennifer found that they were much like her old ones.  Green
bows replaced her old red ones; a gray skirt took the place of her familiar
blue one.  As a sort of bonus, a gray vest went along with it.  "Nice work
if you can get it," she muttered.

	She sighed once again, and decided, as she pulled back the covers on
her extraordinarily comfortable bed, that she might as well get used to one
of her roommates.

	"Marvin?"

	"Yes, Miss Sakachi?"

	"How are you?"

	"I am currently within ninety-nine percent of optimum operational
standards."

	It was about the best response she could expect from a computer that
possessed sentience, yet lacked emotion.  While Marvin, who was either a he
or an it depending upon which school of thought you belonged to, could
instantly spit out the connotations and denotations of what was commonly
called "feeling fine," Marvin was incapable of truthfully saying that he was
"feeling fine."

	Of course, the whole question of whether Marvin could be truthful,
or if even the concept of truth applied to him, was another can of worms
that this narrative does not seek to open.

	She decided to respond.  "That's good, Marvin."  Having ensconced
herself upon the bed, she wriggled under the covers.  "Could you please turn
down the lights?" The room dimmed.  "Thank you."

	"Miss Sakachi?"

	"Yes?"

	"I have found that many people find it easier for me to refer to
them using more familiar names.  Would you find this acceptable?"

	"Of course, Marvin!"

	"Very well, Jen-chan."

	"Hey, I didn't say you could be *that* familiar!"

	"Will 'Jennifer-san' do?"

	"Yes, 'Jennifer-san' will do quite nicely."  She wriggled again and
turned on her side, closing her eyes.  "Good night, Marvin."

	"Good night, Jennifer-san."

***

	"Jennifer-san?  Jennifer-san?"  The neutral voice began to rise in
tone.  "Jennifer-san?  *Jennifer-san?*" There was no response.  Marvin had
decided from his records, and those in the office, that Sakachi would be
happiest if awakened at 04:00.  However, he was not having much success.

	Marvin mulled the possibilities.  Building up sufficient charge in
the nearby computer monitor to cause a spark to arc across to her would wake
her up, but probably kill her, too.  Failing that, there weren't that many
other options.  There was, however, a tiny note he had placed in his memory
ages ago, regarding the possibility of writing a new subroutine for just
such an event.  He located the note, wrote the code, ran a few billion
simulations, and decided that the new subroutine would have an eighty-three
percent chance of success.  He executed the subroutine, a full twenty
microseconds after first realizing that his earlier attempts were not
working.

	"JENNIFER-SAN!"

	"Arrggh!  I'm up!  What's the . . . oh."

	Marvin noticed this and decided that "shouting" had some definite
merits to it.

	Jen looked around at her surroundings.  "I'm here."  She thought a
bit more.  "Marvin, what time is it?"

	"04:02:43.6 Japanese Standard Time."

	"What?  Why am I up so early?"

	"Well, I thought that-"

	"You thought wrong!"  Jen was very fastidious about waking early,
but too early, and one was placed in the line of fire of her temper.  In
turn, while few ever saw Jen when she was *truly* angry, those who did
rarely forgot about it.

	"Of all the low down things!"  She veritably leaped out of the bed
and began tugging on her new uniform.  Screw the shower, she thought.  "To
wake me up a full hour before I usually do . . . ," here she paused to pull
on some shoes, " . . . in the early morning-"

	"Jennifer-san?"

	"Whattya want!?!"

	"I'm sorry.  I thought that you would like to be awake early."

	"Aw, for crying out loud . . . "

	"I have some music prepared . . . "

	It was going to be several hours until assembly.  She definitely had
time to kill.

	"Shoot."

***

	Several hours and five Mahler symphonies later, Jen was in Assembly
Hall with her fellow classmates.  In all, eight had dropped out after the
bombing, for which several terrorist groups were crawling out of the
woodwork to claim responsibility for.  After subtracting the poor girl who
had been the target and victim of the bombing, there were sixty-six students
left in the class of 3029, or as they called themselves, "the Most
Abbreviated Class for the Most Abbreviated Fuku."  After all, how many
freshmen went into school knowing that they would graduate in just a year?

	Assembly Hall wasn't very big, actually.  It held, at most, four
hundred people, which was quite a bit more than the total complement of
teachers, staff, and students who had gathered to hear the annual address
from the Palace.  This year's representatives were Sailors Mars and Mercury,
and the two sat to the right of the assistant principal, Rumiko Takahashi,
who was giving the usual introductions at the podium.  Technically, the real
principal was Serenity herself, but she had too many other things to do, and
so the day-to-day operations fell to Takahashi.

	Serenity only showed up for graduation.

	"And now," concluded Takahashi, "I present you with Sailor Mars for
our first welcome speech."

	Sailor Mars strode to the podium, looking scarcely five years older
than she had been in the closing years of the twentieth century.  Her eyes,
though, told the full story: that rather than being about twenty-one, she
was far closer to 1047 years old.  Around 2030 years, if you included the
intervening years between the silver millennium.

	Then again, it's never a good idea to ask a lady her age.

	"Students," she began, "I come before you as a Sailor Senshi and, though 
you don't know it yet, as your worst nightmare."