THE LOOPER: THE VIRTUE AGAINST LADY SUNBURST - LUNA Part 1

Her birth name was Tsukino Runa, born and grew up in Japan until she was 14 years old, and then moved to the states with her mother, and settled in Metrocon city. She had been in Metrocon for about 8 years now, and her friend in this city called her Luna instead of Runa. Same meaning but different pronunciation. Runa didn’t bother to correct them, and started to adopt the pronunciation, and thus she introduced herself as Tsukino Luna. Luna and her mother didn’t move to the state for no reason, they were a generation of priestess that was tasked with guarding a powerful cursed artifact that sealed a great demon within. The cursed artifact was stolen, and they tracked it to this city. But when they got here, it was a bit too late, demons had been unleashed to the world of man. Her mother took it upon herself, for the sake of their honor and pride as guardian priestess to protect the city and seal the demons back. And thus, in the shadow rarely exposed by the spotlight, the heroic Sailor Miko protected the city from demonkinds. Her mother was the first generation of Sailor Miko, before she passed the mantle to Luna for some unsaid reason before her mother said that she needed to go back to japan temporarily. Luna had succeeded her mom as Sailor Miko for two years. Fortunately for her, she didn’t fight against the demon alone. Luna met and befriended another superhero who also fought against the demonkind, the magical girl Magical Sparkle, which was the secret superhero's identity of Felicity Woods. The two had been teammates for a while. Luna was fine to keep their action a secret, far from the exposure of fame like other superheroes had, but Felicity kept arguing and trying to convince her that being famous would help their fight. Felicity was the typical holier-than-thou girl, and the girl was quite obsessed with being a paragon of virtue, she was quite show-offish about that, but Luna knew well that Felicity didn’t do it out of maliciousness and arrogance. Felicity was a girl with a bubbly desire to straighten things up and enforce virtue.

Luna’s phone rang. It was a call from Felicity.

_Is she finding a demon? Or does she want to vent about any other things she found against her value? _There were two kinds of reasons that Felicity called her, either asking her for help fighting a demon, or wanting to vent about how sinful someone she watched on the street. As a good friend, Luna would always be a good ear for her, though she sometimes likes to cut the conversation short. Being Japanese, she learned about tatemae and how to act politely.

“Hello. Do you need help?” Luna answered the call.

“Listen, I have an idea to make a name for ourselves, are you interested in joining me, Luna?” Felicity replied.

Huh? What kind of thing is she planning this time? Luna was curious.

“Slow down, Sparky, I need to hear your plan first,” she told Felicity. She preferred to call her with her superhero name, Magical Sparkle, instead of her real name.

“Come to my place, it’s better to tell you directly rather than through the phone.”

“You owe me a meal if I hear you say something nonsense when I come to your house,” Luna warned the blonde girl in a joking tone.

“You will not be disappointed,” Felicity said confidently before ending the call.

She didn’t have much to do at home, so Luna was planning to visit Felicity anyway sooner or later today. After her mom came back to Japan two years ago. She basically has nothing to do at home after school.

What happened in Japan? Things seemed quite complicated there, but mom didn’t want to tell me. It has been two years, but she isn’t able to come back to the state yet. Luna was pretty suspicious of her mom. There was one time that she planned to go back to Japan to see her mom, but her mom prevented her. It made her more suspicious of her but her mom still called her from time to time and sent a monthly allowance to her. So, she should be fine...right?

_Well, there’s no point in thinking too much about it for now, I should believe in her that the thing in Japan was complicated but still under her control. _Luna put the thought about her mom in the back of her mind and put her focus back to Felicity.

Should I call her too? Felicity wasn’t her only superhero friend she had made. Lately, she was befriending this other girl, a pretty contrasting girl from Felicity. If Felicity was a nice surprise that she met when hunting demon, this other girl was a nice surprise she met at school.

She picked her phone again and called another girl.

“Hey Sapphire, want to go out and do some superhero stuff together?” Luna called her friend.

“Is it fine to bring me along? I’m not exactly a combat type you know.”

“It’s okay, I think your power will come in handy for whatever thing we will do next. Call it intuition,” Luna assured her friend.

Sapphire paused for a minute before answering, “Okay, pick me up at my place.”

“I will be right there quickly.”

---

Luna arrived at Sapphire’s place, and was greeted by a goth woman with blue hair. The woman is her friend, Judith Gordon a.k.a Sapphire. She was quite a loner and shut in, it was a pure accidental mistake that Sapphire found out about Sapphire’s power. The two girls were put into a same campus’ project. Luna tried to do the project fairly but Sapphire tried to cheat with her power. Luna didn’t rebuke her for what she did, she didn’t go holier-than-thou and condemn Sapphire using her power for cheating. She knew that wasn’t a good way to approach her. It took time for Luna to convince Sapphire to use her power for greater purpose, being a superheroine. Today, she finally had a chance to bring her to the team.

“Can you tell me what superheroes activity we will do?” Sapphire asked the Japanese girl.

Luna nonchalantly shrugged her shoulders, “I’m not sure, but my other team mate told me that she had a plan to make us famous in the superhero circle.”

“You don’t know? How can you be this nonchalant about things that are potentially dangerous like being a superheroine?”

“I trust my teammate, also it is not too late to refuse after we heard her.”

“Your teammate? Are there any other girls aside from me?”

Luna nodded, “Of course. My teammate is Magical Sparkle, a magical girl superheroine with expertise in light magic. I have been working with her for 2 years.”

“Will she accept me? Based on being a magical girl with light magic, she seems like a good girl.” Sapphire expressed her worries.

“You are spot on. Sparky is a good girl, she behaves like your typical holier-than-thou prude when you first meet her, but believe me, she wasn’t that kind of person, she was an approachable nice girl after you know her well-enough. Let me do the talking later.”

“Alright. It's all yours.”

---

The two of them finally got to Felicity’s place.

“Who is she?” Felicity asked Luna about the goth girl’s identity. There was a slight frown and confusion in her expression.

But Luna already expected her response.

“A friend who I think can be a help to our little team. I think an introduction session between us is a good start so we can get to know each other better. I will go first as the initiator, I’m Tsukino Luna. A Japanese girl, but I have been in this city for almost a decade. My superhero identity is Sailor Miko. I’m specializing in making seals.” Luna introduced herself.

“Henshin.” Luna then transformed into her Sailor Miko costume.

This move of Luna **** Felicity to go with the flow. Luna seemed to trust the goth girl enough to transform in front of her. Felicity trusted that her friend was a good judge of people's character. So, it might be wrong for her to think badly of the goth girl.

Having corrected her impression, and accepted Sapphire’s presence there, Felicity then followed Luna’s introduction.

“My name is Felicity Woods, my hero identity is Magical Sparkle. I’m specialized in light element magic.”

“Don't forget to transform into your superhero form,” Luna reminded her.

“Titania, lend me your power,” Felicity shouted her transformation keyword and transformed into her superheroine identity, Magical Sparkle.

“Now is your turn, new girl.” Said Felicity to Sapphire.

Sapphire smiled nervously after looking at the two superheroines’ transformation, “I don’t expect that you two have a flashy transformation. My name is Judith Gordon but most of my friends call me Sapphire, I appreciate it if you also call me that. I prefer being called Sapphire than Judith when I’m not in my hero identity. My hero identity is…Webtalker.”

“Are you a Spiderwoman variant?” Felicity asked in surprise.

Sapphire shook her head, “I’m not, I’m called Webtalker because of my abilities, I can talk to computers or phones and make them search for something for me.”

“Isn’t that something a normal person can also do? You just go to your browser, and then write something on the search bar, and voila, you get the result, nowadays you sometimes don’t even need to write, it can be voice activated thanks to more available AI assistants, so, what made you so different from these?” Felicity looked at her with a puzzled expression.

Sapphire wasn’t surprised and felt belittled with Felicity’s remark, it was a common response she got from people when she described her power.

“I can bypass all cyber security and filter with my power. Let me show you, can you lend me your phone?” Sapphire requested.

Felicity handed her phone to Sapphire.

Sapphire checked the phone briefly to see whether the phone was securely locked. It was locked with password and biometric.

What should I do to make an impression? Sapphire contemplated for a moment before she got an idea.

Sapphire then brought the phone near her lips, “I want you to open your lock, and search a nude Felicity Woods’ picture for me.”

After she issued the command and checked the result, Sapphire handed the phone back to Felicity.

Hearing Sapphire’s command, she was feeling a bit displeased for a moment but then she smiled proudly. She never took a nude picture of herself with her phone, so she believed that it would result in nothing but her smile vanishing once she took the phone back from her new friend’s hand.

“What the…” Felicity was stunned once she saw her phone’s screen. The phone was unlocked, and on her screen, her nude picture she didn’t remember taking appeared on the screen. It was a photo of her in the shower. “I never take this photo, how can it appear on my screen?”

“Today’s phone always has spyware on it, it spies on your activity in the background without you realizing it. You probably brought this phone when you took a bath one time, and it captured your picture but hid it on the deepest root memory inaccessible by anybody except if a special means was used to retrieve the data. My power just bypasses the need for the tool,” Sapphire explained how the photo was taken.

“That is quite a convenient power, you should change your name to Machinetalker rather than Webtalker,” Felicity remarked.

Sapphire smiled wryly and then proceeded to tell about the limitation of her power and requirement to make it work.

“Ah…so, that's the limit. Well, that is still quite useful power if used correctly. It doesn't have any offensive capacity but is quite powerful in information gathering. Anyway, where is your costume?” Felicity asked.

“Okay, let me change to my costume real quick, I don’t have any automatic costume change like you girls, but my attire right now is already half of the costume.”

Unlike her magical friend, she changed into her Webtalker costume manually.

“Alright, now that we have introduced ourselves to each other, it’s your turn to reveal your plan to us, Sparkle. Remember, if you said some nonsense, you will need to treat both me and Webtalker a meal,” Sailor Miko took back control of the conversation.

Magical Sparkle explained her plan to the two. Luna and Sapphire never expected that her plan would be as bold as confronting one of the most infamous and powerful superheroes of Metrocon City, Lady Sunburst. But after Sparkle convinced them that they would avoid a direct confrontation with her, the two finally agreed to help the magical girl.

The three both had expectations in their head if the plans succeeded. The era of old-generation heroes like Lady Sunburst was already due to change, it was now time for the new heroes like them, the Virtues (the team name was proposed by Magical Sparkle) to take the spotlight.

---

They had been stalking Lady Sunburst for a week since they began their operation. They had noted the slutty, buxom heroine’s patrol route, and where she often appeared. After days of observation, they noticed that Lady Sunburst would always go to a certain apartment in the suburb every evening and would spend hours there before flying out in the middle of night.

As they discussed before commencing the plan, Luna would be responsible for placing seal around the apartment, the seal would prevent Lady Sunburst leave her room for some moment, it’s also a safety measure for her friend because unlike the trapped Lady Sunburst, her two friends was free to enter and leave the apartment. Felicity and Sapphire would be the one that would confront Lady Sunburst.

“I’m done with the seal. If activated, a barrier will be erected around the apartment, imprisoning Lady Sunburst in her room and preventing Lady Sunburst from escaping for some moments. It’s now up to you two to get her secret,” Luna reported through her communicator.

“Hey, what are you doing in there?”

Before Luna was able to activate the seal, a man approached her.

“Oops, someone noticed me when I installed the seals, I will settle him first. Good luck with the rest of the mission.” Luna ended the communication.

It couldn’t be helped if people were suspicious of her, she installed those talismans sneakily. Her current task was to avoid further misunderstanding, and dispel the man’s doubt, but also not let the man know that they were here for Lady Sunburst. If the man knew they were here for Lady Sunburst, It would make them seem more to be supervillain with all these talisman seals she installed around the apartment.

Luna turned around and had a better view of the man. He was a nerdy boy with a weird top hat.

Another Superhero? Or Supervillain? Luna dug her memories to check whether there are supervillains or superheroes who looked like the man but didn’t find any. If he was a supervillain, his deeds probably already made it to the news. So, Luna threw out the possibility of his being a supervillain out of the windows after she didn’t find any match. So, the other possibilities was the man was a barely known superhero like them, or just an ordinary man with eccentric getup.

“Uhm…I can explain, I am the superheroine Sailor Miko. Believe me, I am not trying to do anything bad. You may not know me because I never got myself to the news headlines. Can’t be helped because most of my enemies are the demonkind that couldn’t be seen by an ordinary person’s naked eyes,” Luna tried to convince the man.

“So, you are here because there is an unseen demon in the apartment?”

Luna nodded her head quickly a few times, “Yes.”

The man still had a look of doubt in his face, “So, what did these talismans seal do?”

“It’s to trap demons in this area so they can’t escape.”

“Is that it? Just a barrier to prevent the demon from escaping? How do you fight demons with just that?” The man asked Luna some further questions.

“Uhm…I have some other offensive talisman seals, like fireball talisman and others,” Luna answered.

“Seems dangerous, are these talismans effective against humans?”

Luna didn’t reply to his question quickly this time because she was not sure whether it wouldn't cause a further misunderstanding. The talisman was effective against humans, but she wasn’t mad enough to throw a fireball talisman randomly at someone.

Before Luna could think of how to answer his question diplomatically, the man already continued, “You don’t need to answer me, I think I already know the answer from how you hesitate to answer my question.”

“Believe me, I am a superhero, I will not just throw a dangerous talisman at innocent people.”

“Oh, I believe you, unfortunately, I think you are still dangerous, so I will make a tweak here and there.”

The man moved his finger like he was typing in the air.

Luna noticed that the man was doing something, but before she could even ask what he did, she vanished.

The looper sent her back in time.

---

“I’m done with the seal. If activated, a barrier will be erected around the apartment, imprisoning Lady Sunburst in her room and preventing Lady Sunburst from escaping for some moments. It’s now up to you two to get her secret,” Luna reported through her communicator.

“Hey, what are you doing in there?”

Before Luna was able to activate the seal, a man approached her.

“Oops, someone noticed me when I installed the seals, I will settle him first. Good luck with the rest of the mission.” Luna ended the communication.

Luna turned around and had a better view of the man. He was a nerdy boy with a weird top hat.

“Uhm…I can explain, I am the superheroine Sailor Miko. Believe me, I am not trying to do anything bad. You may not —”

“—Sailor Miko? I recognize you!” Interjected the man before Luna was able to finish her sentence.

She didn’t know how the man could recognize her identity, but then she noticed that the man’s expression was not right. He had an expression of wariness and a bit of fear.

“Why are you acting like that? You aren't a supervillain right?” It was now Luna's turn to look at the boy suspiciously.

“Of course I feel wary because in front of me was a criminal and known arsonist. I know you use your fire talisman to set some buildings ablaze.”

“No, I never did that! Who spread that nonsense? I’m a superhero!” Luna rebuked.

“Still too mentally strong, let’s try again.” The man waved her hand, and Luna was gone from the place.

Continued in the next part >>>>

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