Tenou Haruka was not pleased. “Hmph. Lousy Inners. We never had trouble keeping our identities secret when we worked alone together.”
Michiru ignored her lover’s oxymoron. “Perhaps, but it isn’t as though we cannot trust those who know.”
Haruka’s response was a derisive “Pfft.”
“I take it you don’t agree, Darling?”
“Hardly. Who says we can trust them? The Inners? They’d trust a homicidal maniac if he kept the knife behind his back. Setsuna? We know she’s not infallible.” This was followed by an affectionate smile directed towards Hotaru. “Really, it’s kind of comforting to know that even she can make mistakes.”
“I don’t disagree,” hedged Michiru. “Still, she’s usually right, as is the princess. In any case, I consulted the Mirror after the incident at the Hinata Sou.”
The Senshi of the Wind raised an eyebrow at this. “Really? You never mentioned it.”
“Well, the images were vague, difficult to interpret.”
Her partner gave a smirk. “How’s that any different from normal?”
Eyes rolled. “I saw a cliff, facing either a rising or setting sun. I couldn’t tell which. Either way, there were a number of people on the cliff. We were there, with the other Senshi, including some I didn’t recognized.”
“Can you remember any of the faces?”
Michiru shook her head. “I only knew they were Senshi because of the uniform. Their faces were obscured. Senshi were not the only ones present, either. Rei’s grandfather was there, as were the princess’s non-Senshi friend and others I’ve never met.
“In any case, the sun began to move, and I saw it was setting. As it dipped below the horizon, the sea turned rough and the cliff began to crumble. There was panic amongst us, some moving towards the land, others lost to the collapsing earth. The sea became truly violent, and waves struck the land. When I lost sight of everyone, a massive tsunami engulfed the scene. Then I came out of the trance I’d entered, surprisingly moist.”
Haruka frowned. “I don’t like you surprisingly moist outside of—” Hotaru cleared her throat. “I mean, what do you think it meant?”
The Senshi of the Deep Waters shrugged. “As I said, it’s difficult to interpret. The Senshi might be torn apart by some internal strife, one side, then the other consumed by some outside force. The ocean might have started the cliff’s crumbling before the waves could rise into view. All I know is that something is coming that we will only be able to face if we all stand together.”
The other Outers considered this. Hotaru spoke up. “If we’re all supposed to stick together, then why did you leave the meeting with Papa?”
“Well…” Michiru considered this. “Um… Haruka?”
“Don’t ask me, Michi-chan. You’re the one who told Hotaru to come with us.”
As the Neptune Senshi gave her partner her “Enjoy your night on the sofa” glare, Hotaru simply rolled her eyes and smiled. Parents. If they weren’t engrossed in mad science, they were being silly and impulsive.
The phonebook, it turned out, had only one entry for “Saotome” in
Unfortunately, dialing the listed number resulted only in a recorded message. “We’re sorry. The number you have dialed has been demolished. Please hang up, wait for the building to be reconstructed and the phone line to be reconnected, and then dial again.”
This naturally brought Rei, who had dialed, to a pause. “Huh.” She hung up, and then explained the message to the others.
“I guess we’ll just have to visit him in person,” reasoned Makoto.
Ami bore a look of befuddlement. “I can’t help but find it hard to believe that there exists a recorded message specifically for demolished buildings.”
“Wouldn’tcha have ta cord somethin’ ‘fore y’ could record it?” asked Osaka.
While several of the others pondered this, assuming the joke works in Japanese, Ami noted, “Well, we don’t all have to go. What we’ve done before wasn’t very tactitcally sound. We left Juuban completely undefended while we were all at the Hinata Sou.”
“Nothin’ happened,” noted Naru. “And y’ were gone for ‘bout an afternoon, anyway.”
“Ami’s got a point, though,” said Minako, going into Senshi leader mode. “We should only send Kasuga-san, Sakaki-san, and at most three Planetary Senshi. That way, we can keep a decent garrison here without leaving the team headed for Nerima shorthanded.” Naru gawked at the girl she knew for volleyball and mangled idioms in a mix of awe and incredulity. “Besides,” continued the Venus Senshi, “I know I can’t afford that many train tickets. Any volunteers?”
Makoto stood. “I’ll go.” She winked at Sakaki. “Us tall girls have to stick together, right?”
Sakaki merely gave a soft smile and a nod.
The Time Senshi stood as well. Usagi noticed this and asked, “Going with them, Setsuna?”
“No,” answered the ancient one, “just getting the door.” As she slid open the panel, she revealed the other Outers, with Haruka’s hand inches away from performing the same action.
The blonde tomboy had the grace to look sheepish. “Er, sorry about flying off the handle like that earlier.”
“We discussed things,” explained Michiru, “and we all agreed that—”
“Papa was being pigheaded and she and Michiru-mama realized they were only going to hurt things by blowing off you guys and doing their own thing.” While two of her foster parents seemed unamused by Hotaru’s synopsis, Setsuna, along with the Inners and others, was anything but.
“In any case,” Michiru said with a bit more force than necessary, “we also discussed a vision I had when I consulted the Mirror yesterday. You should all know about it.”
“What happened to ya, Akane?” The fiancés were now in the dining room with a calming blend of tea Kasumi was going to start giving to Akane anyway.
The girl took a deep breath. “It’s hard to describe. You wouldn’t want to hear about it anyway.”
Ranma shook his head. “Anythin’ that could turn you inta a shiverin’, cryin’ mess? I gotta hear ‘bout it, if only so’s I c’n protect ya from it.”
His fiancée smiled a little. “Thanks, Ranma. Really. But you couldn’t protect me from this.” Her expression darkened. “No one could.”
“Hey, hey.” A look of genuine concern came to Ranma’s features. “None a’ that. If y’ don’ wanna talk ‘bout it, it’s fine.” It seemed the period of Akane-withdrawal, followed by her sudden teary return, had finally dislodged Ranma’s foot from his mouth.
“No, no. If I talk about it, it’ll get better. It’s not healthy to keep things bottled up. I learned that there. The idea of never being able to tell you that I… that I loved you…” She stared at the floor, blushing brightly.
Ranma was following suit. “I know. There was Jusendo, but, well, Saffron kinda killed the mood. And you, almost.” He winced. Okay, the foot was dislodged. Not completely extracted.
Akane didn’t seem to mind. “So, anyway… Well, it started when I was on the Shinkansen, on the way home. I’d awakened Apollo—”
“Apollo?”
“That’s what she told me to call her.”
“She told us ‘er real name. Calmeria or sumthin’.”
Akane shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. Anyway, I passed out, and everything went…well, not black. Darker.”
“Darker ‘n black?”
“It…it was like something on the other side of black. Like if you mixed it with white, then you’d get black. I didn’t see it for long. I just didn’t see anything after that. Not even blackness. Just…nothing.”
“What did ya hear, or feel?”
“Nothing. It was like I had no senses. There was just…nothing. Not even my body.”
“Sounds kinda borin’.”
“It was, at first. Then it started getting worse.”
“Worse ‘n nothin’? Sounds tricky.”
“I began to…” She paused. Her brow wrinkled. “I… There really aren’t words for what happened next. I sort of started to… dissolve, I guess.”
“Dissolve?”
“Spread out, diffuse. I could feel myself stretching.”
“I thought y’ couldn’t feel anythin’.”
“It wasn’t a direct feeling. It seemed to take longer to think, like my thoughts had to travel farther, like my mind had spread out.”
“Huh. Weird…”
“Yeah. But soon it was hard to think at all. Everything just slowed down so much. And bits of me drifted so far away, it was like I’d lost them. Knowledge, memories, everything. After a while, I…” Akane had had her head down for much of the conversation, but now she faced Ranma. Tears began to flow again. “I didn’t know who I was, or what I was, or even if I was! The only thing I kept, that I could keep, was…” Her blush intensified, and she looked down again. “It was you.”
“Akane…”
Unnoticed by either, the fathers revived and saw them holding each other once again. Also unnoticed by either, Kasumi quietly knocked out the fathers before they could offer any “encouragement.”
“Oh my,” said the eldest Tendo sister, “now I’ll have to get a new frying pan.”
“Explain this to me one more time,” Keitaro said to Su.
“Well, whatcha wanna know?” asked the mad genius.
“How exactly did this work?” Keitaro indicated Motoko, reciting some of her finest pulp at the top of her lungs from the roof of the Hinata Sou, as the antecedent of “this.”
Su nodded. “Right. OK, so Motoko was so traumatized by the two lesbian Senshi sexing each other up that she more or less went comatose,”
“I can understand that,” Keitaro admitted, surreptitiously wiping at his slight nosebleed.
“Well, I figured that if rolling in the homosexual hay put her into it, then rocking the heterosexual casbah could bring her out of it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” argued the landlord.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“That doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.”
The madgirl gave Keitaro a flat look. “You wanna hear this explanation or not?”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Anyway, since this is a girls’ dorm, there weren’t any Tab A’s for the plentiful Slot B’s. I thought about asking Kitsune about using her little black book, but she said she had a hangover the size of the women’s bath.” Su put a finger to her lips thoughtfully. “At least, that’s what I think she said. It was hard to make it out between the dry heaves and the moaning.” She shrugged.
“Anyway, I decided if I couldn’t get a live perpendicular hula going, I’d have to settle for simulations. My first choices there were your girly mags, but you just had to go and throw them out, didn’t you?”
“It was an act symbolizing my devotion to Naru,” declared Keitaro.
Su smirked. “Yeah, more like symbolizing your devotion to unbroken bones.”
Keitaro frowned. “Moving on?”
“Right. Anyway, without any performances or visual aids, I had to go with Plan C: the written word. So, I read Motoko her own romance novels until she recovered.” The tanned girl considered the still-soliloquizing swordswoman. “It’s possible I overshot the goal,” she admitted.
“No, really?” Keitaro sighed. “So, any idea how to snap her out of it?”
Su brandished the Aquarius Amulet. “High-pressure cold shower?”
The landlord frowned. “Anything that doesn’t have a decent chance of killing her? You’re not dealing with me.”
“Hmm, good point.” The princess contemplated this for a few moments. “Of course!” Apparently given an insight, she rushed off and into one of the ubiquitous secret passageways.
A few minutes later, she emerged on the roof at full run, rushing towards Motoko. With a leap and a cry of “Banzai!”, she delivered a tackle-glomp of near-Amazon proportions to the writer/fighter.
The shock and soft pressure on her back interrupted Motoko’s narrative monologue. Blinking, she looked behind her. “Su? What are you—”
“Cool, it worked!” Su beamed at this. “Good news and bad news, Motoko. Good news is you’re not reciting Taming the Rock Turtle of Adonis anymore.”
Motoko gasped at this. Largely out of embarrassment, but slightly because Rock Turtle was still in the middle of the editing process. “The bad news?”
“Well, I didn’t quite take the whole torque thing into account, so we’ll be falling of the roof in…now.” Indeed, the two had been leaning over the edge of the roof quite precariously, and now started the drop.
Motoko sighed. “Why me?”
“’Cause I love ya.”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
“I know.”
The swordswoman simply shook her head, though she did smile a bit. She also retrieved her Amulet from her subspace pocket. (How else do you think she always kept her sword on her person?) “Capricorn Zodiac Power, MAKE UP!”
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(Posted Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:09)
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