Chapter 6: Change of Heart

[CW: Mild smut in the latter half of this chapter]

I was beginning to learn more about how my powers operated as we worked. 

For a start, I learned that the outfit I was wearing was thankfully bulletproof. Even if it looked like cloth, bullets that struck it just kind of vaporized as the energy weaving its way through the fabric turned bullets to dust. 

Unfortunately, bullets that stuck my bare skin most certainly did not disappear and required me to make use of my Moon Healing Escalation ability to patch myself up. I wasn’t certain that I could even use the ability the first time I was forced to try it out, as a bullet had carved its way through my elbow. Sailor Moon in the anime had required the use of the magical Moon Stick, an item that I wasn’t given and didn’t know how to summon. But pressing a hand to my bleeding wound and saying the words had suffused the wound in moonlight and knitted it together (thankfully pressing the slug out as it did so). It took a few minutes to finish healing and was energy intensive, but it saved me from bleeding out.

I made a mental note for future battles to stay mobile to avoid any lethal headshots. I didn’t think I could heal a wound with a round put through my skull.

For what it was worth, those enemy guns were going to be shaking in fear a whole lot more as they aimed at me. I was gaining a reputation with the bad guys as well as eager podcast fangirls. Somehow, the fact that I had jarred up Clayface had gotten around and people took that seriously. I had caught one burglar who literally fell to his knees begging me not to hurt him.

I also caught a streaker who had fallen to his knees begging me to hurt him, but thankfully Carla wrapped him up in a blanket of glass and we got him the help that he needed.

I tried to take a lighter touch with fighting now that I had the kind of power that could basically kill people. Before, when I had been limited to hand-to-hand combat, I had to fight brutally to take down my opponents. Now? I had to figure out the least lethal option possible.

More than a few times, I would give them some fairly gruesome injuries, as sometimes criminals simply didn’t know when to give up or were putting other people in harm’s way, but I always took the time to patch them up with healing magic afterwards. I wanted to be better than Cross had been. I wasn’t going to be cruel or vicious anymore. 

One of the more difficult moments I had was catching a car thief in action a few weeks after our podcast interview went live. Carla had an art exhibit in the morning so I had to run patrol solo that night. 

I heard the sound of the car pulling away and the owner screaming about the theft and leapt into action. I tried to keep pace with the car as it weaved its way through the winding Gotham streets and when the moment presented itself, I hurled a Moon Tiara Magic at a nearby lamppost and brought it down onto the street to block the thief’s path.

They slammed on the brakes with a screech and tried to back up, but as they slowed down to shift gears and reverse, I took the moment to jump down on top of the roof of the car (the moon gravity I carried making sure that I wouldn’t cave it in with the leap I took) and I gave it a firm knock with the tapping of my feet.

“Get out please!” I shouted in exasperation. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I need to.”

The car stopped. After a tense moment, the door opened and the thief stepped out with his hands above his head.

He was young. Barely old enough to drive at all. Wearing worn, visibly hand-me-down clothes. His eyes were wide and he was noticeably shaking as he looked up at me.

I was immediately struck by his reaction as he sagged in relief. He stopped shaking and exhaled a mumbled, “Thank God…”

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t had that kind of reaction before. Most people in your position aren’t happy to see me.”

“I thought you were Batman or one of his crew,” said the thief, his voice still audibly cracking slightly as he spoke. “I got a cousin that got put in the hospital by Batman. Had to wire his jaw shut. You’re that moon girl. You’re not like that…” he swallowed, “right?”

I sighed, crossing my arms. “It’s Sailor Moon. And I’m still going to turn you over to the police, but provided that you don’t try to do anything stupid, I’m not going to hurt you.”

He nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m really sorry about all this.”

I gestured to the car. “What exactly were you thinking anyway? Shouldn’t you be in high school? You know there’s easier and safer ways to make money that aren’t carjacking? What the hell?”

“I needed the money quickly, ma’am,” said the thief, avoiding eye contact with me. “Gramma’s sick. Bills are past due. They were gonna take her house.” He sighed. “I knew a guy who’d get me some cash if I jacked some cars.”

I frowned. At first I thought it was a lie, but I found the pleading in his voice and posture to be difficult to dismiss. Maybe it was magic or maybe it was instinct, but I found myself believing him.

And assuming it was true… well, stealing someone’s car wasn’t right, but I couldn’t fault him for it. While she would be outraged at how I looked now, I would still do whatever it took to help my grandma if she was sick. It was all too easy to see the desperation in his eyes as he looked up at me.

I had faced my share of criminals who had no sense of sympathy or care for others and only sought to get rich quick regardless of who they hurt. This kid came off more like a victim than a crook.

“Okay,” I said, peering over the car, “there doesn’t look to be any kind of damage, so if you get away and leave the car, I won’t chase you down..”

He blinked at me in shock. He seemed to be waiting for the catch, but it never came. He nodded in awe of his reprieve.

“Look,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “There are organizations that can help with dealing with medical debt. I think the Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation actually has some kind of financial aid program for this kind of thing. They’ve got an office downtown, off Dent boulevard and Central street.” I smiled at him. “You can do this without stealing cars. I promise you. Hell… tell them Sailor Moon sent you, for all the good that’ll do. Your grandma isn’t going to want you doing this, though, even for her.”

His eyes were tear-filled as he nodded to me. “Th-thank you, ma’am. I’ll… I’ll do better.”

The sound of sirens began to fill the air. The thief nodded and ran. Likewise, I decided that it would be too much trouble to explain the situation and simply leaped into the air and landed onto a nearby rooftop. 

In theory, I had just committed a crime myself. I had failed to apprehend someone who had clearly broken the law. But… it didn’t feel wrong. And I knew all too readily that the law didn’t always work for people like that kid. It was easy to fall between the cracks… but I refused to let that happen to him. Or anyone else.

I scanned the area from the rooftop for another sign of distress, but…

“Well, that was a little surprising,” said a voice behind me.

I flinched in surprise, but forced myself to turn around politely. If they snuck up on me like that, it wouldn’t do any good to make sudden movements. I had pretty good awareness and there were only a handful of people with that kind of stealth.

It was a female voice, so it obviously wasn’t Batman, but it wasn’t Batgirl, either.

She stood an inch or two shorter than me, dressed in tactical black leather with the red accents of a utility belt, the bat insignia and her fiery red hair streaming out of her head. Her mask still had the pointed bat-ears and blades on her gauntlets, like that of her boss, but there was no denying the fact that she had a look that was all her own.

“Uh… Batwoman, right?” I said, briefly sorting through my recollection of the Bat-Family. “Uh… hi.”

I wasn’t going to lie, I was nervous. This was my first real encounter with a high-profile cape here in Gotham. I had seen others in passing, but never had one of them standing in front of me with their arms crossed over their chest.

“You’re the new girl. Sailor Moon?” she said, walking slowly around me. “Shit… you really do look like her, don’t you?”

I tried to smile disarmingly. “Well… I am her. Or at least her successor.”

“See… I thought the boss was joking when he said I should find you,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean… I’ve heard of the cartoons but didn’t think any of them were real.”

My jaw fell open for a moment. Was… was she talking about Batman?! The Goddamn Batman himself not only knows I exist but actively sought me out?! I froze in shock for a moment as I realized that I had now reached the “big time” of superheroes.

I shook it off and tried to stay focused. “I get that a lot. And for what it’s worth, the cartoon and the comics kind of missed a lot.”

“They usually do,” she agreed. “For a start, I thought your gimmick was supposed to be fighting monsters.”

“Monsters come in many shapes. Some of them are human,” I countered, watching her movements cautiously.

“You seem to have let one of them go,” she said coolly, gesturing to the street below.

“He wasn’t a monster,” I said, standing firm. “He was a kid. A dumb, desperate kid. Tossing him in jail would have been pointlessly cruel. He just needed a reality check.”

“The law says otherwise,” said Batwoman, cocking her head to the side.

“Well… luckily I’m not the moon warrior of law and order but the warrior of love and justice,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Are we having a problem here?”

She stopped moving, putting herself right back in front of me. “Do you think you could actually take me, Girl Scout?” Her voice was low and deadly serious.

I swallowed hard as I sized her up. I was good, sure, but magic wasn’t going to do much against a woman a scant few inches away from me and who was trained by the greatest martial artist alive. “I think doing so would be pointless,” I said, trying to smile disarmingly, “You’re not a monster either. I don’t think you want to fight me. We’re both adults here and we can discuss this woman to woman.” Something fluttered in my chest as I referred to myself as a woman, but I tried to push it aside.

She laughed, openly. It was a rounded, husky laugh. “Oh wow…” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Shit, you really are the real deal. Fuck…” she wiped at her eye, “Damn, I gotta say, you’re kind of refreshing. I don’t know how well you’re going to hold up under what this city does to you, but you look like you know how to handle yourself.”

I nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I’m trying to live up to the legacy that’s been passed to me.”

She smiled knowingly. “Yeah I get that.” 

It was comforting to see her show a little scrap of humanity underneath the mask. It was like I had told the girls during our interview, we were still people behind the capes and costumes.

“So… Batman himself sent you?” I asked, still awed by the fact that I had somehow entered his awareness. Greatest Detective Alive or no, it was a little scary to think about how much he might know about me.

She nodded. “Just sort of an informal “welcome to the neighborhood” kind of thing. Don’t expect a gift basket or a casserole or anything.”

My imagination provided me with the startling image of Batman standing outside my doorstep wearing a stained cooking apron and a casserole dish in his outstretched arms. I shook my head to clear it. “Yeah, that’s fair,” I said, nodding, “Well…” I spread my hands out, “Here I am. Just doing the best I can.”

“That’s all any of us could ask for,” said Batwoman, nodding, “And I’ll tell him you’re alright.” She looked up into the sky. I noticed that the bat signal was illuminated in the cloudy sky. 

“Ugh…well… duty calls.” She turned to leave, waving behind. “Don’t be a stranger, Girl Scout.” She reached down to her belt and pulled out a grappling gun. With a whoosh of air and the hiss of unspooling wire, she hooked onto a nearby building and swung away, her cape trailing her as she left.

I remained on the top of the building, staring in awe at where she had been standing. That had really happened. Whatever she had been looking for, I had passed the test. Hell, freaking Batman knew who I was. I was a real hero now.

I considered what she had said. I knew that Gotham was a corrupt and broken mess of a city. I knew the cops were barely functioning as it was and only the efforts of the Bat-Brigade kept us from falling into absolute chaos. 

But Sailor Moon wasn’t a brute-force hero that pummeled the bad guys into submission. She was a hero who fought from the heart. If her story was to be believed, she had gone from being a dweeby crybaby to becoming the heir to an entire legacy and leader of a crew of devoted teammates.

She was a different kind of hero, and the more I acted under her mantle, the more I wanted to live up to her legend.

_________________

“You shaved…”

I frowned for a minute as I disentangled myself from Carla under the sheets. “What?”

My dorm room was thankfully empty save for the two of us and an empty pizza box on my desk. The bed wasn’t quite big enough for the two of us, but we made it work with enthusiasm as we cuddled together under the sheets. We had just busted some drug dealers a few hours before and had decided to celebrate with some food and… other things. 

“You shaved,” she repeated, feeling at my chin. She planted a kiss on my cheek. It felt surprisingly warm against my smooth skin. “You’re usually all stubbly and overgrown. I like it.” She wrapped herself around me again.

My frown deepened as I felt my face. It did feel remarkably smooth. I hadn’t felt my face this smooth since before puberty. I tried to cast my mind back, but couldn’t remember shaving any time in the past few days. Or weeks. Or months.

That was… unsettling.

“Can I use the bathroom?” I asked, pushing myself off of her, “I gotta take a leak.”

Carla nodded, wrapping herself in the blanket as I stepped out. “Your roommate is supposed to be pledging all night, right?”

“That’s what he told me,” I said, shivering as my naked body was exposed to the chill air of my dorm. “Just give me a second.”

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” purred Carla mischievously.

I made some kind of noise of agreement and stepped into the bathroom.

I had to admit, I wasn’t much for looking into mirrors. My naked body had never been of much interest to me, save for evaluating my muscular gains from working out.

But, as I looked into the mirror, I was struck by a strange sense of discontinuity. Something had changed about me.

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Indeed, my face was now bare of hair, but my chest and body hair was following suit. I had never been particularly hairy, but as I examined myself, I found that my skin was smooth all over my body. As I caressed myself, the sensations seemed… amplified. Like it was more sensitive to the touch.

I noticed another change that was particularly shocking. My muscles had softened.

That was extremely alarming, because even as I had taken up the mantle of Sailor Moon, I still kept to the same workout and training regime on my off hours. I had been doing everything the same as I always did. So why were my muscles shrinking like this? I didn’t feel any less strong, precisely, but they didn’t look right.

I poked at my pecs tentatively, which seemed to have kept their definition, and was rewarded with a sharp stinging sensation. I rubbed at the spot carefully, trying to understand what I had done wrong. I hadn’t poked it that hard, right? Did I strain it during the last workout session? And why had they stayed the same while the rest of my body had atrophied?

The stinging pain on my chest felt… uncomfortably familiar. It was almost the same feeling when I poked at my chest…

When I had breasts.

When I was Sailor Moon.

I reassessed myself immediately, scanning over every single inch of my body. As I took stock of the changes, I realized with a cold feeling of dread what they were all moving towards.

I was becoming a woman. My hips had begun to expand, my chest had become extremely sensitive and somewhat pronounced, the hair on my head looked to be growing out much more quickly than I had expected it to and my junk…

Well, it didn’t quite seem as robust. I wasn’t about to break out a ruler, but I could tell. 

Even my face looked to be softening. More closely resembling the face I saw as Sailor Moon. Slowly but surely, I was becoming a woman. I grabbed at the sink with some difficulty and slowly lowered myself to the floor, shaking as my legs refused to support me. I hugged my knees, my visibly thinner fingers clenched in terror as I rocked back and forth on the bathroom mat.

“Oh shit,” I whispered, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…”

I was becoming a girl. A woman. The transformations of Sailor Moon were bleeding into my real body. The magic of the brooch was changing me. I realized that unless I stopped it somehow, I was going to look like Sailor Moon full-time. I would have to walk around the campus as a woman, I would have to sound like a woman and I would be expected to act like a woman.

And… as I curled up on myself, I found myself upset by how conflicted I felt about that prospect.

Part of me yearned for them to continue. Part of me wanted to change. I wanted to feel my body shifting and changing. I wanted to look like her.

But another part of me focused on what I would tell Carla or my teachers or my classmates or my parents and family. I worried about what I would wear or how I would have to manage living a girl’s life. I worried about all the unknowns which would come from this change.

But the idea of looking like a girl full time? It left me with a faintly warm feeling in my chest. I wanted it. It felt right.

Oh god, what the fuck is wrong with me?!

There was a knock at the door. “Honey? Are you okay in there?”

I clenched my teeth and hugged myself tighter. What the hell would I tell Carla? She made it clear to me from day one that she wasn’t attracted to women. If I fully changed… would she leave me? Would she tell everyone? Would she unmask me as Sailor Moon? How would Gotham react to having a hero who was…

What? A crossdresser? A pervert? What the hell was I? Why did I want this? Was it the brooch itself that was distorting my mind?

No… I could at least make out that much.

I remembered all of those daydreams of being a Sailor Scout from my childhood. Girl’s clothes and looks had always made me feel confused. I had tried to be a boy like everyone expected, but it never quite fit. The feelings of being different had always been there, even if I had ignored them. Some quiet part of me had become a hero with the hope of finding a way to… change, I thought. This had been in my life long before I had ever laid a hand on that brooch. I just hadn’t been willing to address these feelings before now. I had wanted this for longer than I’d been willing to admit.

But who could I talk to about this? Carla wouldn’t understand… hell, I didn’t understand. The only person with any kind of insight into what was happening inside me was on the other side of the planet.

I needed help. I needed to find Sailor Moon again.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to put on a brave face. “Just give me a second.” I winced. Did my voice sound softer now?

But how would I get there? A trip to Japan was going to be expensive. And the soonest that I would be able to go would be the winter break. And that followed on the assumption that I could even scrounge up the money to fly there. And who said that I would even be able to get ahold of her? Tokyo was a big city and I had no way of contacting her.

She had said that she would be there when I needed her. She had promised, even.

I sighed. How was I supposed to hold her to that?

I got up off the ground, opened the door and returned to Carla. She had been standing outside the door nervously. She had thrown on her shirt, but nothing further. “Are you okay?” she asked, frowning, “you look off…”

I tried to smile reassuringly. “Uh… yeah, just tired. We kind of… uh… went at it pretty hard.”

She giggled, blushing. It wasn’t like we were sex fiends or anything, but we were still a pair of hormone-addled college students. We were almost expected to be enthusiastic about this.

Ever since we started sleeping together, it had been simultaneously better and worse for my mental state. I loved the opportunity to see every inch of her beautiful body, but I couldn’t help but feel… inadequate by comparison.

Which, I now realized, probably stemmed from the fact that I wanted to be a woman just like her. I wanted to be a woman while having sex with her. Hell, most of my porn habits were very heavy into lesbianism. The justification, because why would I want to see a man involved? I’m not gay! no longer seemed to hold water.

Did I want to be a lesbian instead?

I had to admit that I ached to have a body like hers as I lay with her. As I saw her now.

“Uh… besides…” I picked my phone off the desk. “It’s late. We were going to stake out the warehouse district tomorrow morning, right?”

“Okay,” said Carla, frowning as we both got dressed again, “I mean… I can go… but are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting weird…”

I sighed. “I’m fine… just tired.”

“Okay…” she said, not quite sounding convinced. “But if something’s bothering you, you know you can talk to me, right?”

Not about this.

“I know…” I said, hugging her, “and I’m fine.” I indicated the bathroom. “Uh… you can shower off if you need to… before you go.”

She made a face. “Uh… no. You and your roommate haven’t bothered to clean that thing since you moved in. I’ll clean up back in my dorm.”

I nodded, feeling both embarrassed and… confused? Sure, I was busy, but had I really neglected it a little… but how had I not noticed?

I looked around the dorm. My anime posters hung on the wall. The mussed, seldom-made bed and sheets. The pizza boxes and fast food bags on my desk and piled around my garbage can. The pyramid of empty soda cans. And the smell… had that funk always been there? Jesus… I lived in a pigsty. How the hell had I not noticed that I had been living in…

A boy’s dorm? Why didn’t that feel right?

Carla went back to her dorm, a little hesitantly, but without any further questions. As soon as the door was shut behind her, I leaned up against it and released all the feelings inside me with a shuddering sigh.

Some part of me wanted to cry… to feel some kind of tangible gesture of emotion to pin all of this on. The best I could do was bury my head in my hands and groan, still feeling hollow and empty within. 

I looked miserably around my dorm. I got to work cleaning up what I could. I tried to leave my roommate’s mess alone, but there was plenty for me to take care of. I worked to bag trash, scrub surfaces and actually take some ownership over my space. And as I ran out of things to clean, I found that the feeling I had been trying to ignore refused to go away. 

My roommate wasn’t going to be back anytime before the next sunrise. On my now-cleared desk at the other end of the room, my brooch glittered. I eyed it warily as I deposited the last garbage bag next to the door and stepped over to my piece of jewelry.

This was the cause of all my problems. This was what was changing me. Maybe if I tossed it away the changes would stop? Or even revert?

I sighed at the thought as I picked up the brooch. I would have to give up so much if I turned away from this gift. My powers would be gone and I’d be stuck going right back to being a street level amateur. And I would tacitly be rejecting the faith that Sailor Moon had placed in me by giving me this brooch in the first place. And there was no guarantee that the changes would go back to normal. Would I just be stuck as a feminine man?

And… I began to realize that the feelings inside me wouldn’t go away just because I tossed some jewelry down the toilet or something. This was a part of me deeper than I had ever known.

I sighed as I whispered the words. “Moon prism power… make up.”

The familiar surge of light and heat ran through me and I was fully transformed once more.

I stepped carefully over to the bathroom mirror again. I had sworn that I would never do this, but at this point, it was too much to resist. My head was swirling with all kinds of conflicting feelings. And despite what I had told Carla, I was still… excited. Cleaning the room up had done little to make the temptation go away. And as a fragile excuse, I told myself that I had to take stock of what my new and future body would look like. 

If this was going to be who I was destined to be… I should explore myself a little.

I took two handfuls of my breasts and felt the weight of them. They jiggled just the same as those of Carla’s, the sensation of the unfamiliar flesh hanging off my chest sending shivers down my spine. With some careful searching, I found the nipples and as I ran my fingers over them, the shock of it caused me to jerk back in surprise.

They were so sensitive.

Heedlessly, I reached under my skirt and felt for the presence of what I had suspected was always there. Indeed, I found the flatness and faint indentation of folds between my legs.

Something in the pit of my stomach stirred, and as I looked up to see myself in the mirror, red-faced and breathing heavily… my hands searching out my body…

In the end, I just gave in and let myself go, giving into the passions running through me.

I tossed myself onto my bed, and let my fingers dance their way over my flesh.

I wasn’t able to get the outfit off, but I was able to carefully work around it to feel the bare flesh beneath. Trying the techniques that Carla had shown me for use on her, I worked furiously at my most sensitive places. My breathing came in rapid pants and my voice moaned as the pleasure seared through my body and mind. And as the sensations reached a fever pitch…

I writhed and jerked as my head went white with pleasure, my body shaking and my voice squealing heedlessly in euphoric bliss. And… despite the wetness in between my legs… I felt ready for more.

I don’t know how long I engaged with myself, but eventually physical exhaustion won out, and I resigned myself to just lying on my bed and soaking in the sensations.

There was a new scent in the air. That of a woman. And this time, it was my own.

I’d have to put on an air freshener or something or my roommate would never let me hear the end of it.

I felt guilty for what I’d done. There was no escaping that. I had been given these powers to save people and defend justice, but here I was using them to get myself off…

But I couldn’t deny that the sexual experience was the best I’ve ever had. Solo or otherwise. Even as it was unfamiliar, the act felt strangely right. The pleasure had been nothing like culminating as a man. It felt… comfortable this way. 

If anything, I was feeling let down that Carla wasn’t here to join me.

Carla wasn’t a lesbian, I insisted to myself. And she probably had no desire to fuck Sailor Moon. But… in this body, I was still attracted to women. And… technically, that made me a lesbian. At least for the moment.

I sighed, pressing my hands to my face. They were extremely pungent and a little sticky, but I couldn’t care about that right now. This was spiraling out of control. Something was wrong with me and I needed answers.

I detransformed and got up off the floor. Scents and fluids remained but my body changed back. Mostly. I stepped over to the bathroom to clean up. Looking at myself in the now-cleaned mirror, still flushed with effort, I noticed the changes to my body had progressed a little more. The faint swelling of breasts. My hair continuing to grow at a noticeable pace. My masculine body hair now completely gone. My facial features softening. The act of transforming was accelerating the changes.

But no matter how much it terrified me, the still masculine features that still remained were more upsetting.

I didn’t know how to tell anyone… I didn’t even know if I could… but as I looked in the mirror, I was forced to admit that I wanted this. I was welcoming these changes.

I wanted to be a woman.  And with every transformation I went through, I would be inevitably granted that wish.

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