Standard disclaimer: The characters aren't mine. This should come as no surprise. I am simply a teller of stories that occasionally claw their way desperately out of my head.

Notes: Someone asked me on Tumblr to talk about how the characters would feel about about a Sailor V anime. That eventually led to this. Conclusion: People should not ask me things.

(25 March 2013)

Author Alert

It was Sunday morning. Time for Minako's regular Sunday morning ritual. This ritual was executed every Sunday morning without fail, except for those times when Senshi business got in the way, or if there'd been a particularly amazing sleepover the night before, at which point it became Minako's Sunday AFTERNOON ritual.

She was still in her fluffy comfy pajamas. She had a mug of chocolate milk and a bowl of sugary breakfast cereal. Her computer was powered up and ready to go.

It was time to read Sailor V fanfiction.

Minako doubled-clicked the icon on her desktop and entered the search criteria. She sat back and munched happily on some milk-soaked marshmallow bits as she waited for the program to scour the web and work its aggregating magic. Minako had requested Ami create it. For research purposes, of course. You know. Against enemies.

Two days later and Ami had delivered in spades. The program kept note of all previous hits so as not to duplicate, scanned the Deep Web, could access locked and password protected sites, downloaded the pertinent files locally, AND it delivered all the results in an easily readable and fully customizable interface!

Minako grinned at the little super-deformed version of herself that was grinning back.

She had, of course, immediately used the program to search for herself.

There hadn't been too much to find under "Minako Aino", a fact that disappointed her. She clearly hadn't done enough to get that stupid school talking about her, and that really wouldn't do. How could documentarians possibly track down her old classmates and come away with endearing and hilarious stories if these stupid people didn't REMEMBER them?

"Sailor Venus" was similarly disappointing, since she was usually just one of the five girls. There were several fansites, and a rather detailed-looking discussion forum that seemed largely dedicated to how wonderful was their friendship, but it was difficult to find things that were just about her, and that was, let's be frank, the thing Minako was most interested in.

Though it had opened up a whole new and potentially exciting world of fanart, which Minako made a mental note to return to later.

Ahh, but "Sailor V". Here, Minako decided, was the entire reason the Internet had been born.

The Sailor V fandom wasn't the biggest on the Internet, but it was sufficiently large enough to satisfy Minako's ego, and filled with some truly amazing and creative fans. They loved to discuss each issue of the Sailor V manga, and go through each episode of the anime with a fine-toothed comb, gushing hundreds of words and detailed analyses about something as simple as one lone screencap of characters LOOKING.

Fans were CRAZY.

Just the way Minako liked them.

But her favourite was the fanfiction. A core of fans so invested in Sailor V's story that they expanded the world, continued her adventures, even "fixed" stuff that the writers had gotten "wrong".

Minako had, by and large, distanced herself from the manga and anime. The creators had never once asked Sailor V for HER input, after all (and certainly never come forth with a royalty check, which was still a point of some contention, thank you), and so she just enjoyed the fact that there were comics and cartoons out there, of her, kinda, doing cool stuff, and generally being awesome.

How many 16-year olds could say that?

Still Minako, too, often felt disappointed by the direction the anime and manga took, and felt especially tweaked when they had her acting so unlike herself.

That was where fanfiction came in.

Not that it was all great. Some of it was, Minako learned the hard way, very much NOT great. Some was even downright … disturbing. Even for a seasoned soldier of love and beauty like herself. But it was all a labour of love, which she deeply appreciated, and undeniably worth it for the stories that were really, truly fantastic.

The search program ended and played a snippet from the Sailor V opening credits. (A song which, some part of Minako's brain bitterly noted, she did NOT sing.) 27 results! Today was going to be a good day. It looked like one of her fan communities had a 'fic challenge. Those were always fun. This week's theme was—

Minako's hand froze on its way to open the first file.

RedBow had posted a new story.

Minako felt her stomach do a little jig of excitement.

RedBow was by far Minako's favourite fanfic author. She (or he, though Minako's gut said "she") had a grasp of the Sailor V character that Minako found almost frighteningly accurate. Minako had no idea how RedBow was able to get that level of nuance from these (honestly pretty shallow) fictional portrayals, but she did. It was like she knew Sailor V.

Like she knew MINAKO.

Through RedBow's stories, Minako felt a surge of excitement that she hadn't experienced since first reading about and watching her own adventures. The disconnect between herself and the Sailor V character had come disappointingly quickly, leaving Minako to just flounder along at first until eventually coming to appreciate them on their own merits.

RedBow changed all that. She put Minako back into the story. Through RedBow, Minako felt herself leaping across the rooftops of England and Tokyo (for Sailor V was an international soldier of love and beauty, all the better to reach a wider market share). She was smart and witty. She was decisive and … okay WAY too ditzy and annoying sometimes, but Minako could roll with that. The simple fact was that RedBow did what even the professional writers couldn't do:

She GOT Sailor V.

For the several thousandth time, Minako wondered who RedBow was. She'd tried to find out, repeatedly. She'd created aliases and fake accounts, left gushing reviews and sent effusive fanmail. RedBow always made the same response.

"Thank you! :)"

That was it. Nothing more. Two words and a smiley face. How the hell was anyone supposed to track you down with two words and a smiley face?!

Minako wanted to know, HAD to know. RedBow was clearly – CLEARLY – her biggest fan. That Minako would never know the person who knew HER so well was maddening. But she was nearly out of options. Subterfuge hadn't worked. Her own rudimentary hacking skills only turned up proxy servers that went nowhere. The best chance she had left was to ask Ami to do her thing, and while Minako didn't personally have a problem with it, she suspected Ami wouldn't react well to "Hey help me discover the true identity of this Sailor V fanfic writer".

Sigh.

Minako double clicked and opened the story, still mulling over her problem. Maybe she could pose as a fellow writer hoping for a collaboration? Offer to buy her dinner? Writers were always hungry, right? There was something about "starving writers". Hm.

She stopped thinking about it and just enjoyed the story. It was really recent too, based around the anime episode that had just premiered yesterday. That one must've really gotten to RedBow, and Minako wholly sympathized; it had definitely messed up EVERYTHING about Sailor V.

V had been asked by the chief of police to guard a precious national artifact that was touring the country. The thief after the treasure was a smooth and ruggedly handsome rogue, yeah okay sure, but V had INSTANTLY been duped by him and only reclaimed the treasure through pure luck.

It had put Minako in a sour mood for an hour or so after. First, while she grudgingly admitted that yes that guy really was totally her type and pretty ridiculously hot for a cartoon character, she would NEVER throw away her duty like that. And even if she had, she sure as hell would've had a plan to get the artifact back AND kick his ass as a thank you.

Clearly RedBow had felt the same. She was essentially rewriting the episode to make it all a ruse on V's part, even going so far as to have her getting crucial information that tied in to the season's main villain.

RedBow deserved dinner AND dessert.

If only she knew who the hell RedBow WAS.

Then something leapt out at Minako. She frowned and went back, rereading the line again.

"Sailor V turned the music up louder than any reasonable person would, seemingly unaware that those around her were TRYING to CONCENTRATE."

That wasn't particularly new. RedBow's narrative tended to be a little on the snippy side sometimes. It was, in fact, one of the quirks that Minako liked best about her. But it was weird how familiar it felt.

Music. Reasonable people.

The spoon fell into the bowl with a sharp clatter.

"Minako! Could you maybe keep the music at a volume for reasonable people? Some of us are TRYING to CONCENTRATE."

Oh.

Rei. Yesterday afternoon. On her laptop all day.

Other moments flashed in Minako's mind.

"Sailor V snatched the magazine from the policewoman's hand, having no regard AT ALL for other people's property."

"Hey, I was reading that! I swear, Minako, you have no regard AT ALL for other people's property!"

"The wadded-up napkin accidentally hit a passer-by in the head. 'Boy, my aim sucks today!' V said pleasantly, completely forgetting how apologies actually WORKED."

"Seriously? 'Your aim sucks'? That's the best you've got? Did you forget how apologies actually WORK?"

RedBow.

An image of Sailor V's red bow appeared in Minako's mind. That was, she had assumed, the origin of RedBow's pen name.

Then the image was replaced by Sailor Mars and her Flame Sniper.

A grin slowly began to spread across Minako's face. It was pleasant, for the first few seconds, but as it continued to grow it became downright evil.

Oh, Rei-chan. So clever. So eternally snarky.

So never, ever going to hear the end of this.