Moonlit Tower (Sailor Moon Inanimate TF)

Hey folks! Hope everyone is having a happy November.

Two stories for you this week! I kinda felt that one was a bit short, so I whipped a second one up as well for a bit of variety. This one stars the Sailor Moon cast in a return to one of my older series, the Tower. I hope you enjoy, but if you're not into quick TFs, hopefully the other story will suit you better!

-

(Contains a lot of inanimate TFery)

“Muuuhhhh, I don’t wanna go in there! Do we really have to do this?” Sailor Moon, icon and inspiration to millions, was blubbering and hiding in Sailor Jupiter’s shadow, as per usual whenever something spooky showed up. And to be fair, the dark tower which had appeared in the middle of their city was definitely spooky. It looked like something out of a fairy tail, or a horror story – a dark, creepy stone structure climbing up into the sky, the kind of place you’d expect to find a dark, skeletal overlord, or an evil queen. It definitely had no place in modern day Juban.

“Of course we do!” Mars, of course, was having none of it, yanking the blonde out from behind her tall friend – who was, incidentally, trying her hardest not to look like she was spooked as well – and shoved her to the front. “Look at that thing! A tower like that does not appear over night for no reason! And besides…” The shrine maiden looked up, frowning. “I’m getting a really bad feeling about this place. There’s something dark in there… Something really powerful…”

“That matches with my readings.” Mercury was beside them, her crystal blue visor already over her eyes, fingers tapping away on the keys of her computer. “I can’t get a clear lock on it, but we’re dealing with a major threat. We absolutely can’t leave this be.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Jupiter punched a fist into her palm, her aura crackling with electricity. “Let’s get in there and sort this thing out!”

“You heard her, oh fearless leader~” Venus leaned in and patted Moon on the back, sympathetic… But also firmly stationed behind her. “Time to go triumph over the forces of evil, right wrongs, eat your breakfast, all of that!”

“… Can’t you guys go in first?”

“No!”

-

The interior of the tower turned out to be much less… intimidating than the outside had let on. Moon stuck her head around the door, quivering like a leaf, only to find herself confronted by the most mundane looking kitchen imaginable. “Huh?”

The other senshi quickly poked their heads in as well, meeting the surprising sight with confusion and raised eyebrows – before losing their balance and all tumbling inside in a heap. Thus ensued a good few minutes of struggling and arguing as they all untangled themselves again.

“How very strange,” said Mercury, once they were all free. She was still scanning the place, and couldn’t make heads nor tails of the readings she was getting. “I certainly didn’t expect to see such a normal looking kitchen in here…”

“This is normal to you?” Moon asked, looking around. “It looks like a superstar’s place or something! Look at all this stuff, you’d have to be really rich to- Ooh! A waffle iron!” And that was Sailor Moon distracted for the foreseeable future.

“Psh.” Jupiter looked much less impressed though. “This place? I mean, it’s okay. It’s got some good supplies, I’ll give it that – but superstar? Nah.” She leaned against a table in the middle of the room, folding her arms. “This is nothing. Now if this were my kitchen, that’d be a different thing, but-”

Poof!

There was a rattle, and the girls looked around – Moon nearly jumping into Mars’s arms in fright. But it was nothing – just a sturdy looking whisk with a green handle and a rose-patterned hilt clattering in an empty mixing bowl on the middle table.

“Huh.” Venus blinked at it. “Was that there before?”

Mercury stepped up and did another scan. “All readings normal. I… guess it was?”

“Alright! Enough of this!” Mars raised her arms and dropped Moon on the floor with a yelp and a crash. “Come on, we can’t hang around down here all day. We know there’s evil upstairs somewhere – let’s just get moving.”

“Owieee…” Moon whined as she got to her feet, rubbing at her pained rear. “Mars, why are you so meeeaaan…”

“Because you were nearly throttling me, Odango!”

“I was scared!”

“So was I!”

“I was scareder!”

“Oooohkay.” Suddenly Mercury and Venus were between the two, Venus soothing an almost literally flaming Mars while Mercury patted a vibrating Moon on the back. “Come on girls. Mars is right, we can’t stay here and fight all day. Come on, let’s go.”

“Fine.” Mars snorted, but otherwise calmed. Moon, on the other hand…

“Can someone else go first this time?”

“No!”

-

Upstairs, things took a sufficient turn for the dark and intimidating. Or, dark, at least.

“Ow! Watch where you’re treading!”

“It’s not my fault, I can’t see a thing!”

“Ack! Who was that! I think I just hit a bad guy!”

“Ngh. No… No, that was me…”

“Oh god, Mercury, are you okay?”

“I’m fine! Just… give me a moment…”

CRASH!

“What was that?!!”

“Ow ow ow – that was me. I think I tripped over a piano…”

“How do you trip over a piano?!”

“I don’t know, it’s dark, and you made me go first again!”

“Yeah, that might have been a mistake, now that I-“

SMASH!!!

“What was that?!”

“Me again! Ack, I think I fell into a closet. Ow, why are there golfclubs everywhere?!”

“Come on Odango, get a move on.”

“Guuuys, Mars is being mean to me again!”

“Oh don’t you start with-“

KRASH!!!

“Oops.”

“Moon. What did you just break.”

“Um. I dunno. But it didn’t sound that expensive, right? Rig-?”

Poof!

Suddenly, there was light. A pure, warm, gentle light, emanating from a small glowing plastic white heart plugged into the wall at the girls’ feet. A nightlight, in fact. The senshi blinked at it, unsure for a moment.

Then Mars shook her head and looked around. “Oh, well, I guess that makes it easier. Wow, this hallway is a mess. Do you think there was a big battle here or something?”

“Hard to say,” Mercury answered, eyes and computer both scanning their surroundings. A broken piano, a shattered display case, and golf clubs everywhere… “It could definitely do with a tidy though.”

“Well, we’re not a cleaning service,” Venus sighed. “Come on. I’m really starting to think this place is just a normal house, but we’ll keep looking. Follow me…”

And the three senshi advanced, their path lit by light as pure as that of the moon…

-

It was much less dark once they’d found and climbed the next set of stairs. In fact, the next floor was positively well lit! Which was a good thing, because otherwise the girls would never have believed what they saw there…

“Oh my god…” Venus stared.

“It’s so big…” Mars shrank back in fear.

“So many books!” Mercury drooled.

Yes, a library – one so stacked with books that the shelves practically bulged, filling the walls from top to bottom and leading off down twisting, turning passages that couldn’t have possibly fit inside the tower that they’d all seen from the outside. It was possibly the most concentrated source of paper any of them had ever seen in their lives.

And of course if anything was going to distract the senshi of knowledge…

“Down, girl,” Venus sighed, trying to keep Mercury reigned in. Ami was normally the best behaved of all the senshi, but if something came along that tripped her specific weaknesses she could be as bad as all the rest. “Come on, we can’t wait around for you to read all of these.”

“You can go on ahead! I’ll catch up!” Oh boy, she had it bad.

“No!” Mars started physically dragging her towards the stairs – or trying, anyway. Mercury was shockingly hard to move when she got stubborn. “Come… On… Merc… We have… Evil!... To beat!”

“But there’s so much knowledge here to learn…” The blue haired senshi sighed wistfully. “Are you sure I can’t stay here?”

Poof!

Venus and Mars paused – Mars picking herself up from the floor from where she’d just randomly fallen - finding themselves staring a sleek looking computer with a blue tinted frame. It looked frightfully modern – no, in fact, it looked downright futuristic. Heck, if the two didn’t know better, they’d have been sure it was made of technology from the Silver Millennium…

“Uh.” Venus frowned, trying to remember what she’d just been thinking, but whatever it was evaporated before she could get a firm grasp on it. Why was she staring at this PC? “I guess this is what they use to look up specific books…?”

“Yeah, gotta be,” Mars nodded – she too wondering why she felt so peculiar.

The two stayed for a few more moments, really feeling like there was something about this bit of tech that was important for some reason, like they were missing something really obvious… But in the end, the pair just shrugged, and continued on upstairs.

Behind them, the computer eagerly whirred away, processing book after book without the slightest bit of rest or pause…

-

Up the stairs was another bizarre sight – an art gallery. One stocked with a seemingly endless supply of art – paintings, sculptures, displays, murals… And all with a decidedly… erotic leaning, in Mars’s rather irritated opinion.

“So we’re dealing with a pervert, obviously,” she finally growled, as she found herself confronted by a sculpture of a pair of women doing something very unfit for civilized company.

“Hmmm… I wouldn’t be so sure,” Venus said, looking more amused than anything. “This stuff seems pretty standard for the art world…”

“Oh?” Mars blinked and looked back at her. “I didn’t know you were an art aficionado, V.”

“Well sure I am. Have you seen me?” The blonde smirked and did a little pose, not all that dissimilar to one of the ones held by the sculpture. “I used to do a little modelling work, y’know. Nothing like these, really, but still. I kinda had to put it behind me after it took too much of my senshi time, but I still keep a nose open.”

“A nose…?” Mars rolled her eyes at Venus’s unique way of making a metaphor. “Fair enough. I’m sorry you had to give that up, V.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” the blonde waved her concerns off. “I’m happy being a superhero. But just remember what the world lost out on!” She struck another pose, winking at Mars. “If life had gone a little differently, this could have been on display for everyone to see~”

Poof!

Mars blinked, and then wondered why she was staring so intently at this painting. Especially such a lewd one! It depicted a blonde woman, a red ribbon in her hair, posing on top of a giant open clam shell… Which seemed familiar to Mars, but she’d thought that the original picture had the woman at least trying to cover her body. This one was fully nude, and seemingly quite proud of the fact. The pose almost seemed familiar, in fact. Actually, all of it seemed familiar…

…. Wait, why was she still staring at this?

Blushing brightly, the senshi pulled herself away from the picture and hurried away, only glancing back a couple of times – heading for the stairs. She had an evil to confront. That was why she had come her all alone, after all.

-

The top of the tower, it turned out, was a very cosy affair. A snug lounge awaited the dark haired senshi as she finally climbed to the top of the stairs, panting for breath. And there, at the heart of it, was the evil that she’d come so far to face.

… She was mildly irritated to see that the ‘evil’ seemed to be a blue haired woman in a dressing gown and fluffy red slippers, who was leaning back in a comfy looking armchair reading a book. It really didn’t fit her mental image of what was supposed to be happening at all.

“Oh,” said the woman, looking up from her book. “You’re finally here. Took you long enough.”

“Shut up,” the exhausted Mars growled. She’d come way too far to be talked down to now. “I am Sailor Mars, Champion of Love and Passion – and in the name of Mars, I’ll chastise you!” Flames burst up around her as she struck a pose, ready for battle.

The woman, on the other hand, just nodded. “Very nice. Actually, I’m kind of impressed. Originally I was going to let your leader be the one to reach me up here – you would have made a lovely archery set for my sports closet, by the way…”

Mars blinked. Leader? Archery? But… She was the only one here… Wasn’t she?

“… But she kept breaking so much of my stuff. I had to do something about her. She’s much safer as a little moonlight nightlight, don’t you think?”

“Uh.” This was not going at all according to plan. Why was this woman spouting gibberish? “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds evil! So, uh. Knock it off!”

“Evil?” The blue haired woman shrugged. “Oh, how evil can I really be? Your blue haired friend wanted to stay in my library, I just made sure she would! And the blonde one, she was asking for it. In my opinion she makes a far better work of art than she does a crime fighter – and don’t think I didn’t notice you staring at her~”

Mars found herself blushing and she really wasn’t sure why.

“… The brunette, okay, fair, but she did insult my kitchen. If she thought it needed improving then fine, she can be part of it too. Now everyone’s happy.” The woman paused, and then looked right at Mars. “Except for you, of course. What to do with you…”

Okay, that was a threat, that was definitely a threat. No matter how harmless she seemed, Mars could feel the power radiating off of this woman. It was time to strike, before she could make good on whatever she was planning!

“Mars flame sniper!” She cried, the fire around her shaping into a bow and launching her most powerful attack – a bolt of flame flying straight towards the evil threat!

… Who raised a finger and twirled it in the air. “No need for an archery set up here. Maybe… Ah, I know.”

The bolt of flame skidded to a halt – and then turned around, shooting straight back at Mars. “What the-!”

There was no way to dodge. The blazing heroine felt the impact throw her back towards the wall. Fortunately, she couldn’t be burned, but she’d have to act quickly, or-!

Poof!

The final senshi vanished in a puff of smoke – and in her place, up against the wall, was a traditional style white marble fireplace, flames blazing away merrily in the hearth. The mantlepiece was decorated with red ribbons, and the occasional Shinto charm meant to welcome in good luck. The atmosphere in the lounge grew just that little bit cosier.

“Much better,” the witch smiled, settling back in to read her book. Peace returned to the tower, mildly filled by the warm crackling of flame, and the occasional turning of a page.

Soon enough, the tower would once again depart from this world, just as mysteriously as it had appeared within it – and when it left, it would carry away a very stylistic whisk, a gently bright nightlight, a genius of a computer, a magnificently beautiful painting, and a warmly comforting fireplace.

None of these items minded their fate – of course they didn’t. They were just objects, after all – not a one of them had a mind with which to complain. Their entire purpose was to serve the whims of their owner now – and so they would, forever more.