Luna Star, Part 1

Power is nebulous, both utterly essential and absolutely worthless

To truly understand someone you must first see how they handle power

That will tell you more about them then anything else

How somebody deals with power, how they seek it, how they reject it, why they need it

Those are all essential to that person, it is who they are, there true self

I didn’t used to understand this but since then I have seen many people acquire power

They took on the mantle of power and showed me their true selfs just as I showed them mine

Some people never expect to have power

They live their lives in dull contentment until they suddenly receive power

They do not understand what to do with their power

They many mistakes and disappointments finally come to understand what their power is for

Not that you can ever truly know

There are those who always desired power.

Those who worked and sweated to gain it

They believe they know what they will do with power

Yet when they finally gain it they are surprised.

Their beliefs are tested as they discover that power is not what they expected

There are those with a dark fate

Those who gain more power then most people can imagine

With that cursed power there is no black and white

No truth and lies

Only walking through the dark desperately trying to find the light

Even in the end these people might never know if what they have done is right or wrong

Yet my story is different then all of these

There are those who can not escape power

Born to great power these people flee

Maybe they want a peaceful life or just want their life to truly be theirs

There is no escape

No matter where they go they find power, like a beacon of light they attract it

That is my story, my fate, my doom

When nobody else is capable will I be able to stand

Will I have the strength within me

Will I be able to overcome the obstacles in front of me

Will I be able to remain myself

I do not know

That is what terrifies me and make me try to free from power

The power that I can not escape

Ever

Chapter 1 - Magical

There was a barely noticeable flicker of shadows as the cat jumped from one fence to another. He was a black cat. He softly landed on the fence and began running down it like he had someplace to be and indeed he did. The cat was looking for somebody, somebody very important. The person was very close, the cat knew that, but he didn’t know the exact location. So he was searching, going between houses, looking for the person.

There was a large crashing sound and the cat’s ears perked up and he began running in that direction, jumping between the neighborhood fences as he weaved between the houses. There was yelling which grew loader as the cat got closer and closer. Eventually it stood on a fence looking out to the street that stretched between two lanes of houses.

There in the street were around a dozen of people, kids really, they must have all been high school age, somewhere between sixteen and seventeen. They were fighting each other. A little less then half of them were guys that had a violent look about them. They carried various things like metal pipes and baseball bats, definitely a dangerous group. The others however were girls, yet they looked even more violent then the guys. Maybe they only looked more violent because they seemed to be winning the fight with the guys.

Then there in the center of the mess the cat saw it. Huddled up into a ball was a small petite, small but likely the same age as the others. That was the person that it was looking for, that person would be able to help him. It was poised to jump off the fence when it heard a voice.

“Is that all that you have got Bloody John, I was expecting more from a gang that was calling itself the toughest thing in town. You aren’t going to get anywhere if you are going to just get beaten by a bunch of girls.” The cat’s attention was drawn two one of the girls in the middle of the fighting. She was a little taller then most of the other girls. She had her silvery hair tied up in a knot behind her hair and was wearing a practical set of jeans and plain black t-shirt.

The most distinctive things about her however was a baseball bat she was swinging back at forth at the boy in front of her. He was only barely about to keep fending off her blows with his own metal pipe. The boy was scrambling back as the girl swung at him and not moments later he yelled, “Fall back.”

The boys began pulling back. Several of them seemed badly bruised and a couple of them had some bad scrapes. As the boys retreated the boy who must have been Bloody John yelled back toward the girls. “We won’t forget this Luna Star. We will come back to make you pay.”

The cat stared dumbfounded at the girl. He had through the the cowering girl had been the person he had been looking for but he had been wrong. This was the girl, now that he could see her he know there was no mistake. Yet, that should be impossible, the person should have been like the cowering girl. He hesitated, the cowering girl have the necessary qualifications too, that was way he had initially made a mistake.

Yet, the delinquent, the one called Luna, she had potential. More potential then the cat had ever expected. He knew should would become strong, but now that he could see her he know that he was wrong. She wouldn’t just become strong, she would be invincible.

Luna reached out a hand to the cowering girl and helped her up. The girl stood, wobbled for a second, and then ran off away from Luna. Luna watched the cowering girl go and then motioned the rest of the girls who followed her in the other direction.

The cat hesitated for a couple of second trying to decide which one of them to follow. Then the cat jumped off the fence and began heading off toward Luna. There simply wasn’t enough time, he needed to go with the best that he could get first, the others would be able to come later.

Luna shut the door behind her as she stepped into her uncles apartment. He wasn’t home which wasn’t unusual because he had some sales job that required him to travel across the country a lot. The just meant that Luna usually had the house to herself. She dropped her baseball bat into the umbrella stand that her uncle must have gotten from whatever previous epoch he had decorated the rest of the house with.

It was already getting late and Luna had eaten cheap grocery store food with the rest of her gang earlier. She walked toward her room and fell back onto her bed. She lay there looking at the ceiling until she heard a scratching sound at her window. She looked up saw through the glass, a black cat sitting on the balcony just outside her window. It was perfectly black with smooth short fur.

This however was the third floor of the apartment building, not someplace a cat should be. The cat didn’t even have a collar. Luna stood up and walked over toward the window. She looked down at the cat through the glass. Then she drew the blinds and returned to her bed. Somebody else could deal with the strange cat.

The scratching continued, cat claws against the glass, which was painful to hear. Luna tried to deal with it by putting on of her pillows over her head but that didn’t help very much. Finally she stood up and began to walk out of her room, the couch in the living room was comfortable enough to sleep. However just as she was about to leave the room she heard a voice say “Please open the window. We don’t have much time and I need your help.”

It was a soft voice and when Luna turned around there was still only the cat. It stood on the other side of the window and it was watching her. The mouth of the cat moved and again Luna could hear the soft voice say, “The window please.”

Luna stood there for a second, contemplating. Time dragged out until the cat eventually spoke again, “This isn’t a dream or your imagination. I really am speaking to you. Now if you could please open the window so that we can talk better.”

“I know” said Luna. “My dreams are never like this.” She walked over to the window and unlatched it before sliding the glass door that lead out onto the balcony open. The cat stepped through the doorway and jumped up onto Luna’s bed. He turned around and sat down before turning his head toward Luna.

“Please Luna, I need your help. You are the only person who is capable of helping me.” Said the cat.

“I don’t have any cat food but if you want you can spend the night here but please be gone in the morning.” Luna began walking back toward the door to the living room.

“No, that isn’t what I need.” Said the cat looking as offended as a cat can look. “You have the potential that I need. The potential to defeat the Elder Darkness. Without your help it will rampage uncontrollably, you are the only person that can stop it.”

“Not interested.” She opened the door into the living room and walked through it. The cat barely had time to jump off the bed and chase after her before the door clicked shut. He cat ran passed Luna and turned around facing her.

“The city will be in peril if you don’t help me stop the Elder Darkness. This town, you friends, everything. They will fall if you do not help me.” With the constant rejections the cat was getting more aggressive with his tactics, he couldn’t just let her walk away like this. “I can give you the power to defeat it, to save everyone, to save yourself.”

Luna looked down at the cat, a tired look in her eyes, “Can’t you give this power to somebody else? I don’t really want it.”

The cat bristled and responded, “You are the only person who has the inborn talent to be able to defeat the Elder Darkness alone. I don’t have time to find enough people who are capable of defeating it together. Instead I have to rely on you. Please, you are the only one I can turn to.”

“Am I really the only one capable of defeating it alone?” Asked Luna.

“Yes”

“Is just once enough?”

The cat hesitated for a few moments, “Yes, just once is enough. There will be more but I will be able to find others if I have enough time.”

“I’m not going to be forced to wear a pink costume am I?”

Again the cat hesitated, “Not if you don’t want to.”

“And I have to fight this Elder Darkness? With whatever power you grant me?”

“Yes”

“Fine, just this once though.”

“Thank you Luna Star”

The cat moved toward Luna and as it did so a circle of light began to form on the floor around her. More circles formed and runes began to appear between the circles. Lines and diagrams forming complication symbols. Then they began to rise up off the floor and begin to rotate around her.

The cat spoke louder then it previously had, “Luna Star, hear my call. Let the light inside you envelope. Let your powers awaken. Let you soul break free of it’s shackles. Awaken the magic inside of you and become reborn. Let it be so”

There was a loud crackle as the lights above Luna broke leaving her only cast in the glow of the magical runes. Then darkness began to spill out from Luna, appearing from nowhere, darkness that devoured the light and spread out from her.

The cat took several long steps backward saying, “Wait, what are you doing?”

The darkness pressed up against the runes, eating at them, trying to overwhelm them. The darkness engulfed the runes and spread outward for one tense moment before runes of black and white spread across it. Like binding seals they pushed the darkness back. The runes of light which had been visible before mixed and merged with runes of black, runes the cat didn’t recognize.

The runes pushed the darkness back farther and farther until a form became visible beneath it. Finally the darkness broke like a bubble, leaving Luna Star standing on the floor where she had been before. However she looked a bit different then before, her clothes had changed to a dark black that seemed to been made of silk. Across the edges skirted pants and ruffled t-shirt were the white runes. Her hair was tied up with a strip of black cloth that also had the white runes on it.

She stood there blinking in the hallway as the light from the floor dimmed and finally the only light was from another lightbulb down the hallway, one that hadn’t been blown out.

The cat stepped forward a couple of paces and asked, “Are you alright? It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

Luna looked down at her clothing and then back at the cat, “I guess the powers of a magical girl don’t agree with me.”