Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A Morning In the Life of a Tokyo Pedestrian ❯ Chapter 1

[ A - All Readers ]
Author's Ranting: I was going through my list of favorite fanfics
deciding on whether I wanted to read something I already liked or
find something new, when a thought leaped out and and smacked me
in the head. Ricocheting off of my head, it landed on my computer
desk looking curiously like a pencil sharpener. And then it
spoke.

Author's Thought: There are not enough stories about the little
people!

Author's Ranting: And that little thought that looked curiously
like a pencil sharpener was right. And so I set out to tell the
story of a morning in the life of a Tokyo pedestrian.

And no, the author is _not_ crazy... At least she doesn't think
so.

Disclaimer: I did not create Sailor Moon and it's characters.
Now, the unfortunate pedestrian featured in the story... I _did_
create him. He's MINE!!

===========================================
A Morning In the Life of a Tokyo Pedestrian (G)

by Christina Anton
daylin@sailorsenshi.i-p.com
http://angelfire.com/anime2/dayan jell/antons/home.html


pedestrian (peh-dess-tree-an) n. : A walker; one traveling on
foot.--pedestrian adj. : Mediocre; plodding.

From "The Grosset Webster Dictionary"


The man is, by all standards, a normal citizen of Tokyo,
Japan. He has a perfectly normal wife and two perfectly normal
children, both of which are boys of the age of twelve and
fourteen. And each is a normal citizen of Tokyo, Japan.

The man himself loves his, by all Tokyo standards, normal
wife and children. He has a job working at a law firm in Juuban,
which is where he lives. He only has a twenty minute walk between
his home and his job, but normally takes one of the many buses
that travel around the very large and bustling city of Tokyo.

But today, he has awoken in a good mood with plenty of time
to take a nice morning walk along the sidewalks of the tenth
district.

And the second he set foot on the sidewalk, he became a
pedestrian.

Pedestrians are a very common thing in any city. But there
are three general types of pedestrians, or ped for short: the
morning peds, the afternoon peds, and the evening peds. The man
that we are following is quite obviously a morning ped.

Morning peds consist of the early morning joggers, students
walking (and sometimes screaming) their way to their respective
schools, and of course, people going to work.

But there is nothing quite like a _Tokyo_ morning
pedestrian. Or even just a Tokyo pedestrian in general. You see,
Tokyo is a strange city. It has been plagued by all sorts of
monsters and strange events for a good length of time. And every
citizen living in Tokyo knows this.

But perhaps not quite as much as a Juuban pedestrian.

Juuban is the area that would be known as ground zero if it
were a publicly known and acknowledged warzone. But it is not
acknowledged as a warzone because most in the area choose to
ignore it for the sake of their sanity. Our normal, morning
pedestrian is one of these people.

At the moment, he is five minutes into his walk to his job.
Even now, he is unconsciously dodging all the dangers of being in
a city: waiting that extra second after the sign says 'walk' to
check both ways of the road for any danger before walking across
the crosswalk, taking a step to his left as a blonde-haired girl
sprints past him wailing, "I'M LAAAAATE!!!", and keeping aware of
any signs of danger. If a professional psychologist were to do a
study on the mannerisms of citizens in different cities around the
world, they would find that the citizens of Tokyo have the best
sense of danger of all of them. But who wouldn't when they
constantly had to avoid areas where girls in sailor fuku battled
monsters in the streets?

It seems that today, our pedestrian's danger sense has
failed him. Instead of taking the bus which would have kept him
relatively safe, he has chosen to walk the streets that are prone
to attack. Right now, other pedestrians doing their business on
the sidewalks are unconsciously listening to their Juuban-enhanced
danger sense and finding other things to do in any other area but
there.

Unfortunately, some of them can't get away fast enough,
including the pedestrian we are currently observing.

A squeel of tires pierces the air and car horns blast as a
car with a black star painted on the side skids to a stop in the
middle of the street. Our pedestrian with two kids and a loving
wife has stopped along with a few other peds to rubberneck and
wonder 'what the hell is going on?'. It is just for a moment, and
that is all that is needed for all hell to break loose.

A red-haired woman steps from the car, wielding an odd
looking gun, and is pointing it at one of the previously jogging
pedestrians. One second she is gawking like the rest, and the
other, she is lying on the street just two meters from our
pedestrian. An odd looking crystal is floating just above the
ground near her, but no one is looking at that anymore.

Because, at the moment, a chain-link fence has just turned
into a monster that, to our Tokyo pedestrian, looks like a demon
from the lowest bowels of hell. Our pedestrian is a smart
pedestrian, so he looks for a place to duck and cover lest he
become snared in a chain-link net like some of his other
pedestrian brethren.

Unfortunately, he trips over the body of the unfortunate
jogging pedestrian. The fence-turned-demon turns towards him as
his briefcase clatters to the ground. He hears a voice call,
"Chaina! Get the heart crystal!" and his rapidly beating heart
speeds up another notch. Only about 1.4 percent of the
residents of Tokyo have ever personally gotten involved in a
monster attack, and our perfectly normal Tokyo pedestrian is now
one of them.

And he's currently cursing his bad judgement in deciding to
walk instead of take the bus.

Before he can do anything, he hears another voice call out:

"Hey you! How dare you disturb this wonderful morning! I,
bishoujo senshi Sailor Moon, shall punish you for making students
late for school!"

The pedestrian can't help but feel relief that the sailor
suited soldier for justice has provided a distraction so he can
haul his butt out of the soon to be battle zone. Hiding in an
arcade that he doesn't know the name of, our pedestrian watches
the battle from the large window in the front of the arcade. He
feels much better being out of the sight of the phsycho with a car
and the demon thing.

The only movement outside is that of girls in sailor fuku
that had just joined the fray, and a fence-demon from hell. All
of the cars in the road have been abandoned or have had their
drivers netted by the demon. All of the pedestrians that hadn't
been caught had long since run for cover.

It only takes roughly four minutes for the Sailor senshi to
defeat the demon. They talk for a moment with two other girls in
fuku like theirs, and then jump onto a roof ten meters above their
heads, bounding off out of sight. Our pedestrian is thanking
Furuhata Motoki for the shelter of his arcade. He goes outside to
get his fallen briefcase, and then goes on his way, just like
everyone else has after the violent display.

_This_ is normal for the residents of Tokyo, whether they be
a driver, a sales clerk, or a pedestrian. By all standards, our
pedestrian with a wife and two kids is a normal citizen of Tokyo,
Japan.

And this morning, he was a normal pedestrian in the Juuban
district of Tokyo.

And even though our dear pedestrian has just seen something
that is going to stay with him forever, he is still a normal
citizen of Tokyo, Japan.

"Are you having a nice morning, Sagisu-san?" the secretary
at the front desk asks him as he makes his way to his office.

He stops for a moment, thinking about what had happened.
Sagisu nods to himself and replies, "I've had a normal morning so
far, thank you." He then smiles and goes to his office.

End

Did that thought that looked like a pencil sharpener have a good
idea? I hope you readers got the point of this story, because I
don't think I can explain it any better than with the story
itself. Did that make sense? Bah, blame the pencil sharpener.

If you have any questions about the story, or just want to praise
me on a job well done, then email me.

7/18/01