Carefully approaching the eye of the storm, she could just make out a glowing jewel, hovering in place. Ranma’s heart crystal floated, emitting a blinding radiance that was nearly as overwhelming as the storm had been. Ranma’s body had been vaporized, leaving his heart crystal to float on a pillar of chi, reigning over the storm’s fury.
Hotaru squinted behind her visor. She had no idea what to do or even what she could do about the situation, but she wasn’t about to give up and somewhere deep inside… The Silence began to stir.
The Silence had absorbed more chi in the last five minutes then it usually received from a dozen wielders. It couldn’t really be said to be sentient, but it had its moments and one of those moments was now, as it reached out and began to manipulate the storm at the unknowing behest of its wielder. For a near perfect engine of obliteration, such as itself, destroying a planet was child’s play, literally, while creating something took a bit more effort, fortunately recreating something wasn’t all that complicated in the scale of things, but the two large cracks running through Ranma’s heart crystal did add a whole new level of difficulty.
“WHAT,” nearly a dozen throats voiced, panicking about little Hotaru risking herself for a Faux Knight.
“There is no such thing as a ‘knight of silence’. That was just a character in one of Artemis’ favorite shows. He never existed,” Pluto explained calmly.
The assorted senshi stumbled over each other’s words trying to question Pluto and just generally annoying the hell out of her. Tired of the constant yelling and bickering of the group, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
“Enough already, there is no KNIGHT!” Setsuna was a bit out of sorts, the Timegates were acting up, she felt more than a little rejected by Rei’s reaction to their being related, and she had the mother of all headaches. She rarely lost her temper, but a rant every now and again helped anyone blow off steam and she felt she was due one.
Slamming her keystaff into the ground, so it would stand on its own, she put her hands on her hips and began lecturing them on the legends of the knights among the commoners and the lack of any actual knights themselves, “I can assure you that any knights you meet are likely to be strangers, because the kingdom didn’t empower males. Not because of sexism, but just because we never figured out how to match…”
Being used to Setsuna as the ever calm voice of reason, the senshi were stunned and let her rant. They let Minako rant, so the least they could do was offer Setsuna the same courtesy.
Pluto was just winding up her commentary on the state of the Mercury computer’s corrupted files, when the storm… quietly imploded. Facing the senshi, Setsuna didn’t notice and silenced anyone’s attempts to inform her with a cold glare. She still had half a page of material on the Lunar Cats’ faulty memory and she had no intention of starting over because she’d lost her place!
“Luna can’t remember squat about the past and that has caused her to become a bit paranoid. Just because someone isn’t from the Silver Millennium doesn’t mean they are our enemy. There are dozens of fighters who could hold their own in a battle against youma. Hell, there are dozens of enemies that we don’t have to face because someone else is taking care of them.”
Ranma approached the group, with Hotaru clinging tightly to his side, making him carry her glaive. Setsuna’s lecture on ‘Why the senshi should start making friends with other heroes’ continued on uninterrupted, as Ranma set Hotaru down and they both watched curiously, as she continued on in the same vein for another five minutes.
Quickly getting bored and feeling a bit energetic, Hotaru nudged Ranma and motioned towards the keystaff with her eyes. Ranma reached out and picked up the staff, assuming a position similar to Hotaru, who was standing at attention like she was Setsuna’s honor guard. Of course to the watching senshi it looked like he just looked in her eyes and read her mind, adding further proof that he was the ‘Knight of Silence’.
Ranma held the key staff in his right hand and felt the same tingle he’d gotten from the staves he’d snagged off of Saffron. Thinking about some of the magical weapons he’d run across, he tried sending a tiny surge of chi into the staff and watched as it melted into a shield, another surge of chi and it became a glaive. Hotaru glanced over and switched weapons with him, letting him experiment with her glaive, which seemed to have a near infinite set of forms as well.
Hotaru stopped him when it took the form of a Roman short sword. She’d always wanted a more compact weapon, she just didn’t have the stamina or the height to wield the glaive properly, but a sword like Haruka-Poppa’s Space sword would be perfect.
Ranma stuck the Time Glaive back in the ground and they waited patiently for Pluto to run out of steam.
“And what the hell is up with airline food, is it some form of anti-terrorist defense that they developed?”
Hotaru nudged Ranma, silently asking him to get Pluto to stop. Ranma got what she wanted immediately, because both of them were suffering from an excess of energy at the moment and this was quickly getting boring.
Ranma stepped behind Pluto and shook his head, making his bell ring cheerfully.
Setsuna spun around, not expecting someone to be standing right behind her, and took them both down in a tangle of limbs.
Hotaru giggled and yelled, “Dog Pile!” Before jumping on top of the two and attempting to tickle them both into submission.
Luna cleaned a paw and drawled out, “Well… I guess someone’s memory isn’t as great as she thinks it is. If that’s not the Silent Knight, then I’m a pitbull.”
Nabiki and Kasumi stared, eyes glued to the screen.
Kasumi had popped in the, assumed, low budget, Ranma anime and shortly after the opening credits it had headed straight to an ‘action’ scene. Neither had said a word or moved for the entire length of the tape.
As the closing credits rolled across the screen Nabiki began to notice that Kasumi was putting out an aura.
‘That’s not a battle aura,’ Nabiki noted, with a small corner of her mind, as the majority was replaying scenes in her head and beating herself up over having given Ranma to Akane when Kasumi was, apparently, perfectly willing to share.
It was far too real, despite being a cartoon, to be dismissed as some work of fiction. Both the sisters Tendo could easily see themselves acting in exactly the way they showed on the tape, not to mention it involved some fantasies that neither had ever said aloud much less written down where someone could have read them.
“I’m guessing magic,” Nabiki voiced, after clearing her throat a couple of times.
“So umm, you too,” the elder sister asked nervously, as she obliquely approached the subject of whether it was drawn from both of them or just from her own personal fantasies.
“Yep,” Nabiki didn’t even hesitate. She owed Kasumi far too much to leave her exposed like that.
Kasumi let out a relieved sigh. “I wonder if that means… Oh, my!”
Nabiki started snickering and quickly descended into near hysterical laughter that was shortly joined by Kasumi herself, as they both shed the tension they’d built up from watching that… video.
Akane grumbled and sipped her soda. It was bad enough that she’d lost the match, but she’d gotten a lower score than Kodachi, who had just started the sport today! Hiding out in another ward was a bit childish, but she could really use the break.
The bell over the ice cream parlor’s door chimed and in walked Tatewaki Kuno.
‘Arrrgghhh! I was looking for a break from the madness,’ Akane thought to herself, but then did a quick double take at the way he was dressed.
Kuno was wearing a modest business suit and holding a script in his hand, as he took a seat at one of the booths and waved a server over, ordering a root beer float, before reading his lines aloud and making some minor changes to the wording.
Akane watched, stunned. Kuno was dressed like a normal person and was interested in acting?! This was beyond bizarre. Bracing herself, she stood up and did something she never imagined she would ever willingly do, she slipped into the seat across from him and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”
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(Posted Sat, 25 Oct 2008 05:49)
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