Setsuna’s counterpart from Crystal Tokyo merely smirked. “See? You’re already developing my sense of humor.” The two of them were at the Time Gates, discussing the Crown Princess’s reappearance in 21st century Tokyo. Naturally, both were in full Senshi regalia, but for ease of communication, the Crystal Tokyo version was the only one referred to as “Pluto,” mostly due to seniority.
Of course, just because Setsuna recognized Pluto’s seniority didn’t mean she always showed respect: “Shut up.”
“My, aren’t we grumpy?”
“Look, I don’t particularly like not knowing what’s going on….”
“Well, you’d better get used to it—your marriage to Ranma pretty much kills any chance of total omniscience.”
“But still, you could have at least hinted that Chibi-Usa was coming.”
“I could have, but everyone else gets so much enjoyment from watching your reactions when you don’t know what’s going on. Besides, the less you know about the nature of what she’s doing, the better she’ll be able to complete her tasks successfully.”
“So I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”
“Are you saying you don’t trust yourself?”
Setsuna just rolled her eyes—she still sometimes had trouble believing that she was the woman she was talking to. “Is there anything else?”
Pluto’s demeanor finally changed to the more serious tone that Setsuna preferred. “As a matter of fact, yes. You need to quit stalling and tell Ranma about the Senshi.”
Setsuna sighed. “I know—I’ve just been waiting for the right time. But I just let him know I was bisexual; I want to make sure he can handle knowing about the Senshi.”
Pluto, for her part, wasn’t buying it. “Listen to yourself! Ranma? Not able to handle some information? You’re acting as though he’s some fragile china doll! For crying out loud, he managed to survive the Neko-ken with relatively few psychological scars—”
“I’d say having a panic attack whenever you see a cat counts as psychological scarring.”
“I said relatively few scars. By all logic, he should have gone insane beyond all hope of recovery. If he can handle the Neko-ken, he can handle knowing about the Senshi.”
“All right, all right. You’ve convinced me. But you have to admit, there are certain contexts for this that would be better than others.”
“You’re right. Fortunately for you, the best context is happening tonight.”
“What?”
“Unless I’m mistaken, Haruka is going to try and smooth things out with the Inners tonight. And you’re seriously considering coming out to them soon afterwards. I say you just show up that night and do it. The only ones who aren’t scheduled to show up are you, Hotaru and Mamoru, but you can easily change that. Once you’ve got that business out of the way, you’ll all be in the same place for when you reveal the big secret to Ranma.”
“And just how is he going to know to show up at Rei’s shrine?”
“Well, he has gone to Nerima for the day, so he’s probably going to want to talk to his father, which means he’ll have to go to the Tendo place…”
Setsuna finally caught on to her counterpart’s hints. “Chibi-Usa’s going to bring him there, isn’t she?”
“Right in one.”
“Great.” Setsuna sighed again, though it wasn’t exactly in frustration. Truth be told, she was glad that her future self and Chibi-Usa had gone out of their way to make sure this actually happened. “Well, I better be going, then. If I follow your advice, I’m going to be doing a lot of talking tonight.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Pluto said by way of a farewell.
Setsuna just harrumphed curtly in response… but just before left, a smile suddenly came to her face. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Ryoga wasn’t happy. When he’d regained consciousness, neither Ranma nor the redhead was anywhere in sight. Luckily, he did manage to find his home. Unluckily, neither of his parents were in, though both had left extensive letters for him, to which he wrote responses, as was the usual plan. After restocking his supplies, he set out to find Ranma again, to capitalize on his newfound advantage.
Within 15 minutes, he was hopelessly lost. Again.
Now, he was on the beach of a tropical island, staring at an oddly familiar-looking plane wreck. He read aloud the name he found on the fuselage. “Oceanic Airlines…” Ryoga paused as this bit of information sank in. “Damn it, not again!”
Akane was eating lunch with her friends it came up in the conversation. “So, Akane, have you been enjoying life without Kuno?”
The youngest Tendo simply raised an eyebrow in response. “Do you really need to ask?”
“Um, no, I guess not. But Akane, what I want to know is whether any guys have ‘taken advantage’ of the unusual situation.”
“If by that you mean that guys are actually willing to talk to me, then yeah, of course. Not having the threat of a massive beatdown hanging over them tends to make people behave the way they normally would.”
“True, but that’s not what I meant either,” Sayuri responded. “I meant, has anyone—” She stopped to make sure no one was eavesdropping, and then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Has anyone asked you out?”
Akane sighed; she’d expected one of her friends to ask her a question like this eventually, but she hadn’t counted on there actually being a guy who’d be brave enough to take the risk. “Sayuri, do you really think I’d risk someone’s health by letting the world know that he’d asked me out on a date? Kuno is bound to find out about what’s been going on eventually, and when he does, he’ll be madder than a British cow.”
“I’m not asking for names or anything like that. I just want to know, has anyone asked.”
“Maybe…”
“Uh huh… and what answer might you have given him?”
Akane looked around furtively, and in as quiet a voice as she could, responded, “Yes.”
To which her friend Yuka responded:
“You’re actually going on a date?!”
Within seconds, a crowd had gathered.
“Who is it?”
“When is it?”
“How did he ask?”
“Where are you going?”
Her classmates’ inquisitiveness was starting to give Akane a headache. “Thanks a lot, Yuka.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry won’t exactly cut it when Kuno goes into a frenzy because I’m actually interested in another guy.”
“So it is a guy?” came a disappointed male voice from the crowd.
Akane groaned. “For the last time, Hiroshi, I am neither lesbian, bisexual, nor bi-curious, so will you please just give it a rest already?”
“That doesn’t mean you have to shatter our fantasy like that,” Hiroshi’s best friend Daisuke added in.
“Yes, I do.”
At the other end of the cafeteria, Gosunkugi looked like he was about to have a panic attack—not far off from the truth, actually. The realization that Kuno’s eventual return was all but inevitable hit him like a ton of bricks. Great… what the heck do I do when that jerk gets out of the hospital? There was no way he could call off the date—not only would he never forgive himself for the lost opportunity, but there was a reasonably good chance that Max would wring his neck for the trouble he’d caused. Wait a minute—Max! He’ll know what to do!
Kuno thought he felt a sudden chill—though that was unlikely, as he was still in his overheated hospital room. He brushed this his mind and turned back to the subject at hand—the immanent redecoration of his room to acknowledge the existence of yet another of his female admirers. “No, no, Sasuke. That one will never do. I need a clear picture, one that will allow me to gaze upon the beauty of Sailor Neptune’s face so that I might remember and cherish it for the rest of my years. This photograph is far too blurry.”
The retainer of the Kuno clan sighed to himself. For some reason, his master refused to accept that there just weren’t many pictures of the Senshi to begin with, and that those that did exist were inevitably blurry and grainy. To top it all off, there were much fewer pictures of the so-called ‘Outer Senshi’ circulating amongst the magical girls’ admirers than the ‘Inner Senshi,’ whom most people found to be have more accessible personalities—though Sasuke dared not mention this to young Kuno, who would likely go berserk at any speculation that Neptune was not the most universally beloved, admired (and to a lesser extant, lusted after) Senshi among the general population. Instead, he simply said, “I’m sorry sir, but this is the best I could come up with on such short notice.”
Kuno sighed. “I suppose I shall have to press that deviant Nabiki for better quality photos of my love—she’s done excellent work with her sister in the past.”
“That reminds me: Sir, what do you want me to do with your shrine to Akane Tendo?”
Kuno wrinkled his brow in a puzzled expression. “Whatever do you mean, Sasuke? Why should I want anything done to my display of love for the beauteous Akane?”
“Well, you’re making this new shrine to Sailor Neptune, so I would assume that you’ve shifted your attention away from Miss Tendo—”
Kuno abruptly cut his servant off. “My dear Sasuke, you should know better than to make assumptions of that nature. Is it not perfectly obvious that I should have them both?”
Sasuke nearly did a double take at this remark; surely the young master hadn’t just said what he’d thought he said. “Both, master?”
“But of course! The Blue Thunder has proven himself more than worthy of the simultaneous attention of two women on several occasions.”
“And what occasions would those be?” the retainer muttered to himself.
“I beg your pardon, but did you just say something, Sasuke?”
“Uh, no sir.”
Megalomaniacs generally fall into one of two categories: those that desire power, and those that desire the trappings of power. Those of the latter type of are usually envious of the prestige and adulation (feigned or otherwise) that come with power, as well as the apparent ability to have all of one’s material desires instantly met. Such persons usually tend toward grandiose behaviors that are intended for the sole purpose of making oneself look superior to everyone else.
Anthracite, on the other hand, was squarely in the first of these categories, as Bob was discovering. Endymion’s fifth general had a reputation as a bit of a recluse—actually, he was so reclusive that he didn’t really have much of a reputation with the general public. However, Anthracite’s official biography did shed some light on this behavior: apparently, he’d overseen the Crown Prince’s military intelligence service. This position also explained how the vast majority of his biography had been classified using some of the most powerful censoring spells Bob had ever encountered. “Information magic,” which affected the dissemination of ideas was a rather esoteric branch of the Craft with a passing similarity to disguise charms and other glamours, though information magic tended to be much more difficult to learn and perform. In the time of the Silver Millennium, it had been in its formative stages, and apparently Anthracite was on the cutting edge of that field—a fact he was no doubt proud of, as it had been left unclassified in the section of the biography that described his duties in his capacity as Endymion’s general.
The report on the period he’d spent serving under Beryl was even more abbreviated, and the control on this one were obviously quite recent. Still, Bob gathered that Anthracite had served the would-be despot in much the same capacity as he had done with Endymion—though it was widely known that during this time the General had also logged a significant amount of actual combat time, something that wasn’t in the “official” biography (at least, not the parts he could see). Not surprisingly, most of Anthracite’s battlefield experience dealt with reconnaissance, but at the same time, he’d also shown himself to be quite adept at guerilla warfare, a strategy that was almost unheard of at the time of the Silver Millennium—clearly, he was an innovator in almost everything he did, and an effective one at that.
But for all of the insight Bob garnered from these abbreviated biographies, one question still burned in the youma’s mind: Why? As in, Why is so much of his biography classified? or Why did he give me his real name if he’s so concered with secrecy? But most prominently, Why does he want all of this power in the first place?
Maxil D’raal, aka Anthracite, aka Gerald Stewart, was sitting in his office at the top of the skyscraper where the international headquarters of Hypercorp were located. He had a lot on his mind—but that was to be expected; not only did he have to ensure the continued success of his upstart financial institution, he had to orchestrate the hostile takeover of Crystal Tokyo, a political entity which (at the moment) only existed in the minds of less than a dozen teenaged superheroines, all without bringing himself to the attention of the Sailor Senshi. It was a huge challenge, really. Quite simply, the Senshi had never faced an adversary with his ultimate goals and his overall approach to world domination, and he was counting on their confusion when he did reveal himself to ensure his eventual victory. At the moment, however, he wasn’t concerned with that. No, he had more pressing matters to worry about.
“Damn it, Marty, we haven’t even been in the U.S. long enough to pay taxes! How can the IRS already be hounding us?” There was a pause as the person on the other end of the telephone responded. “Marty, for future reference, when I ask rhetorical questions, it’s in your best interest not to answer.”
“Are you alright, Naru?”
Naru Osaka looked up from her meal to see the distinctive hairdo of her best friend, Usagi Tsukino. “I… I’m fine, Usagi. Why do you ask?”
“Well, you’ve just seemed kind of down the last few days. Is something wrong?”
“No… not that I know of… it’s just….”
“Just what?”
“Did you hear about the youma attack in Nerima?”
“Uh, you mean the one that happened at the mall?”
“Yeah… that one.”
“Well, what about it?”
“What about it? Youma are attacking. Again. And sooner or later, that means I’m going to be attacked. Again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Every time there’s a new round of youma for the Senshi to get rid of, I somehow manage to get caught in the middle…. It’s enough to make me wonder if there’s something else going on I don’t know about.”
“But… but it always turned out okay, right? The Senshi have always managed to handle every new problem they’re faced with.” Usagi was getting concerned; Naru had never expressed doubts about the Senshi before—where was this coming from?
“Well, the Sailor Senshi may do a decent job of protecting love and justice, but just once I wish someone would explain why their enemies always come after me.”
Usagi didn’t know how to respond to that.
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(Posted Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:59)
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