Pluto grimaced with dismay as she fought the rapidly swirling temporal energies, attempting to spread her influence farther and more thoroughly that the devices were supposed to allow for.
A nudge here... a pull there... but then this slipped out of place... and THIS individual became a problem...
In the dark alcove on Pluto, a woman toyed with the fate of the universe, changing, making, and destroying lives and histories with the ease and thoughtlessness that one might modify a drawing. The universe fought back.
Just as Pluto began to truly feel the strain, right when the Time Gates began to reach their limit, the time guardian blinked in surprise.
"It... It worked?" She asked softly, staring into the image before her with wide eyes. There were the Senshi, all gathered around a table, chatting about nothing. No robots. They were all perfectly normal girls (at the moment, anyway) with perfectly normal free will who weren't getting any, and whose dry spell would last into the hundred-year range if Setsuna had anything to say about it. Mihoshi was bugging Washuu in her lab and not altering the fabric of the universe based on her bungling interpretation of people's wishes.
It almost brought a tear to her eye. After all her hard work and trial and error, she had dodged a HUGE bullet.
Of course, it was right then that she saw Ranma Saotome walk into the room where the inner Senshi were talking to be greeted with warm smiles and greetings.
Pluto had take deep breaths in order to keep herself from banging the Time Staff against her head. "It's not... so bad... at least they're not sleeping with him... right?" After the bizarre and absurd scenario of the robot sex-slave harem, she was willing to give the timeline a little more leeway than she might have otherwise.
Given the dreamy look on Usagi's face, she wasn't so sure about that.
"WHAT?! USAGI?! UNACCEPTABLE!!" Setsuna snarled, immediately launching into the Gates of Time once more to annihilate this newest hitch. Bad enough that Ranma got involved with the OTHER Senshi, now he was tearing Usagi and Mamoru apart?
Setsuna had to resist the urge to shout "Enemy of women!" at Ranma's image in the gates. She wasn't given to such immature behavior, and besides, it wasn't like he could hear her anyway.
Unfortunately, she had forgotten that she had left the Gates of Time quite near their limits when she had stopped. The Gates were a piece of magic technology comparable, though it was a vast simplification, to an extremely advanced computer, one that made the Mercury Computer look like a 90th century Apple II. It had been working in the rough equivalent of an "overclock mode" for a length of time that only it was capable of computing due to the relative chronological scales involved. No Guardian of Time had used the Gates so extensively before in a single continuous period of time, and it showed.
Crack! Setsuna's eyes widened as a huge split ran down the Gates, and the entire artifact started to glow in a very unsettling fashion.
Crack! Tinkle! Skrik!
"Well, shit."
KABOOM!!
Pluto had done a very good job. Well, at least before she nearly destroyed the very thing she had sworn her life to protect. The Gates of Time would recover as ancient and never-before-used autorepair systems went online and shook the dust off, but needless to say, the Senshi of Pluto wouldn't be doing any time traveling, time modifying, or time checking for quite some (ahem) time, nor would she be happy about that fact in any way.
Well, that would all be saved for when she finally woke up. That had been quite the explosion.
Most of the anomalies that had been detected HAD been fixed adequately. Somehow Pluto had managed to throw a hundred rocks in a pond such that the ripples all canceled each other out and left the pond peacefull and serene.
Except for one tiny bit of motion that barely made it to the edge, and rippled all the way back to the Silver Millennium. No big deal, right? One tiny factor, one meaningless life, one more lost soul that can't make any real difference.
Then again, if Pluto believed that, she wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
The Mau were one of the first races "absorbed" (as it was a much nicer term than "welcomed at gunpoint") into the Moon Kingdom. They weren't the most prominent, or the most successful, but they made due with the cards they had been dealt.
Mau were typically intellectuals and minor magi. Their race was limited in what they could do in the arts of magic, but it was enough that most of them were commissioned to do work in the grand labs or civics buildings of the various planets, working small spells and useful cantrips for officials, dignitaries and scientists. It wasn't a grand life, but it was a living, and they were certainly no worse off in the Moon Kingdom than by themselves.
Some mau because interested enough in mundane knowledge to become advisors. Often these individuals pored over stacks of books and holovid displays for years until some noble took notice of their area of expertise, and then matched them with some other member of the elite that had need of such skills, even if such appointments were normally temporary.
Luna and Artemis were exceptions. They had been born and raised to be royal court advisors. Their interest in royal protocol and knowledge was taught to them such that they could operate within the sphere of Moon Kingdom politics while still acting as knowledgeable confidants of their masters. But most were not.
There was one mau, for example, who had been passed along as "an excellent advisor" from one military leader to another, prized for his strict adherence to military protocol, encyclopedic knowledge of tactics, and honest and effective critiques of fighting prowess. He eventually found his employment being "gifted" to the general of the Order of the Royal Knights of the Moon, probably in a weak attempt to curry enough favor for his last master to gain enlistment in that order. The mau in question didn't mind, but accepted being passed around like property like a soldier being shipped to another battlefield.
When the attack on the Moon Palace had commenced, the mau had taken one glance at the opposing forces, and immediately tried to organize a retreat. With the power of the Senshi and the Knights, it was entirely possible to regroup with the remnants of the fleet and launch a counter-attack to retake Mercury before it became a ball of scorched, barren, lifeless rock. With the technological might of Mercury secure, and with Beryl gleefully basking in the tactically irrelevant acquisition of the Moon Palace, it would have been just barely possible to turn a massacre around into an actual war.
The Senshi did not take kindly to this suggestion. The arguing itself lasted long enough for all the best escape routes to get cut off. At that point, the general to whom he served buckled under the insistence of the Senshi to hold the Moon Palace at all costs. The rest, as they say, is history.
But it just so happened that when Queen Serenity put certain events into motion, it was three moon cats that were swept up and put into stasis, not two.
Luna, Artemis, and Orion began their long sleep, waiting for a time when they would seek out and serve the Princess Serenity.
"Don't go wandering off. Bad enough you can't remember anything, the last thing we need is for one of us to get eaten by wild animals."
Luna frowned deeply, glaring at the large, gray tomcat with the crescent moon on his forehead. "Last I checked, YOUR memory wasn't crystal clear either, Orion!"
"It's clear enough that I remember that I don't have much to remember," the gray cat said, constantly scanning the surroundings for threats. "YOU'RE the big important emissary from a dead civilization. I'm just along trying to keep you from getting yourself killed along the way."
Luna bristled. "Right now I'd really like to remember whose bright idea it was to send some random military advisor into stasis along with me and... well, why ARE you here, anyway?" She was about to mention someone else who had been put into stasis, but oddly enough, she couldn't remember that individual's name. Had there BEEN someone else at all?
"Just what I said. I'm a tag-along," Orion murmured, hardly ashamed at the admission. "It was either this or death."
"Well I do NOT appreciate the way you're constantly giving me orders and talking down to me! If you're going to 'tag along' as you put it, then we're going to have to set some ground rules for conduct, do you understand?"
'I wonder what death would have been like,' Orion thought to himself. Then he darted to the side and tackled Luna into some bushes, eliciting a startled yowl from the female moon cat.
"What are yo-MRRFFL!" Orion did his best to stuff his paw into Luna's mouth to keep her from speaking, though he knew he'd regret it a moment later.
As Luna's fangs sank into his wrist, he clenched his teeth and bore it. 'Just a flesh wound, just a flesh wound...'
As soon as the couple and their dog passed by, he swatted Luna over the head to get her to release his paw. "The threat is passed. Please don't bite me next time I'm trying to save our lives," he growled.
Luna glared at the other moon cat. "This is a public park, Orion. The appearance of two cats is not unusual, and that dog was leashed!"
"It's still a threat!" Orion snapped back, getting off the black cat. "This environment holds dozens of dangers for organisms of our size! According to YOU, you're the last hope for a possible triumph over the Negaverse! I'll-" he cut off quickly as he noticed a jogger that had wandered too close was looking around to try and find the source of the yelling.
Luna smirked, an expression that came far too naturally to a cat. "Orion, please, we ARE trying to keep a low profile. Try not to blow our cover."
Most other individuals would have snapped and either attacked or yelled at Luna at this point. But suffice to say, it wasn't in Orion's nature to do so. When something wasn't going his way, he was neither inclined to complain about it nor let it drive him to irrational behavior. He tended to fix the problem.
As Minako would botch up, "He didn't get mad, he got even."
A spark of memory ignited a possible plan of action in Orion's mind as he recalled a weakness of his (and consequently, Luna's) current form. With a snappy backflip, he accessed his subspace pocket, and one of the small battlefield medical kits released a bandage onto the ground.
Luna didn't notice, and as she kept walking forward she started to lecture him on the proper respect he was to show her in the future, which mostly involved NOT tackling her to the ground every time a perceived threat wandered by.
Orion had to fight to keep a grin off his face as he lunged with the bandage in his mouth. This wasn't some petty revenge, after all. It was for the best. No, really. Honest.
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(Posted Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:19)
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