She created a time double to assist her. Without a trace of remorse, Sailor Saturn cut the twin in half.
It was only when she slumped into unconscious and Sailor Moon noticed that her Cutey Moon Rod had bent in the middle from repeatedly smacking it against Dark Pluto that the beating stopped. Though not without some regrets from those administering the literally royal smackdown.
"Okay, what's going on now?" asked Sailor Moon.
"It looks like," said Sailor Mercury, "the re-emergence of Ranma Saotome has produced some odd results."
The people knew a good story when they heard it.
The security cameras and hospital personnel all agreed on some points in the events on that floor of the hospital in Japan.
A woman in a version of a seifuku style uniform appeared outside the hospital. She went past Security at 14:04. Security Officer Naoko Watanabe attempted to stop her and was unable. Instead of trying to stop the woman herself by leaving her post, she flagged other operatives on patrol.
Apparently without using the elevator or stairs, the assassin appeared on the 3rd floor leading to the Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit where there was a higher Security presence than normal due to trying to keep certain rooms in isolation. Security Officers Miaka Ohara and Yukari Nakayama attempted to stop the intruder at 14:06. Utilizing some sort of spherical energy attack, the intruder defeated Ohara and Nakayama. Officer Ohara had both legs and her right arm broken, with fractures in her ribs and lumbar in vertebrae. Officer Nakayama did not survive and the details of the autopsy were still being withheld.
At 14:07 a group of hospital personnel responded to the noise and gathered. The intruder utilized the same attack, this time targetting the floor. Shrapnel from the blast caused a number of those present to suffer a number of wounds and give ground to the intruder.
At 14:09 the intruder had reached 3C14-3, or 3rd floor, Corridor C, room 13, bed 3. There she confronted Nodoka Saotome and the recovering Ranma Saotome. She utilized her weapon to strike down the mother and another energy ball attack to assassinate the boy. Nodoka Saotome survived but was being treated for psychological trauma and a concussion.
The words afterward were disputed - those who came in or told other people about it changing details in the normal manner of such, memories of those involved being notoriously unreliable. A young pediatrician at the hospital, Kumori Mizuno, had had the presence of mind to turn on the tape recorder she used to make notes for later. While the audio quality was terrible, it was enough corroboration for the newspapers.
"To build a future utopia where the matriarchy rules, Ranma Saotome must die."
"It's for Crystal Tokyo, you understand. For a perfect future, sacrifices must be made."
Some might believe that feminist organizations would have had their heyday. At this point their dreams of a male-less society, where the weakened male gender could be slapped down and made to suffer retribution was almost at hand.
Except that as Dark Pluto had pointed out, there were an awful lot of these scenes where families reconciled and relationships bloomed anew as the certainty of a painful death loomed closer. With that sort of thing hanging over one's head, leaving the toilet seat up hardly seemed worth the anger it might have generated. A large number of women the world over had lost their husbands and sons or were still in the process of watching them die.
The government leaders who had rushed into the power vaccuum counseled patience, understanding, peaceful solutions. For the most part.
The government leaders who had instead reacted by wanting to find those responsible and exact the most bloody of retributions found that a large number of their constituents might have disagreed with such a course of action until their family members had died in agony before their eyes. Now, however, it was an entirely different story.
The Japanese government found itself in such turmoil due to the mass die-off that anything resembling a coherent united response was purely coincidental.
Then the word came out that a second Ranma Saotome had been located.
Response was mixed when the woman confirmed the tale and that the deceased father was one of the two present.
The story of the two wanderers was put through every kind of analysis that could be found, with results that ranged from mundane to bizarre.
That the two were taken into custody was perfectly understandable. Medical isolation with layers of guards both mechanical and human was likewise understandable.
Sailor Dark Pluto stirred.
Sailor Moon had become Princess Neo-Serenity through sheer angst and upset, and so she was a little more elegant as she applied the Bent Cutey Moon Rod to the source of the problem.
WHACKUM!
"That may not have solved the problem," reasoned Princess Serenity, "however it sure felt good."
Sailor Mars and Saturn both nodded agreement to that.
"She locked the Gates," said Mercury, who'd been a little bit upset to see her own mother getting cut up by shrapnel. "We can't go back and alter the past so that this never happened. We're stuck with the plague having wiped out a significant number of men. If we make any changes, it will have to be from shortly after the attack on the hospital or forward."
Mars, Saturn, Serenity, Jupiter, and Venus all began throwing ideas back and forth - occasionally taking a moment to make sure Dark Pluto was thoroughly tied up and gagged and unconscious.
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(Posted Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:32)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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