"We have won, but none of our kingdoms shall survive this winning, and the forces that have doomed us all shall rise when they have recovered," said the Queen in a voice that was quiet but carried out over the troops. "They have hid themselves too well, I cannot find where they have retreated to regenerate."
One of the felinoids limped forward, holding a damaged arm. "When shall this be, Queen Serenity, it will take time for us to heal as well."
Queen Serenity closed her eyes, bowed her head, and concentrated. The orb in her hands lit with a pale white glow. "Ten and a half..."
"Just over a week?" said the felinoid in dismay.
"...thousand years," finished Queen Serenity. "Even then their power will be depleted by repairing themselves and breaking through the barriers again."
Dead silence.
"That's beyond my expected operational life," pointed out a bioroid.
"We'll have to use suspension techniques," said Mercury, "none of us can remain operational that long."
Queen Serenity looked sadly out at her shattered kingdom. "I see two possibilities. One will come who can awaken you in the future, his thread of fate is bound to yours. He will save you and you will save him. Yet how that ends is broken into dozens of possible futures."
"The other?" asked Uranus.
"You seperate and go your different paths again, the Evil that we fought against rises triumphant in the end." Queen Serenity frowned at what she saw.
"Hmmmm," said Uranus. "So this awakener? Some great hero type?"
"No, at least not initially," said Serenity. "He has it within him to be a hero, but he will need your influence and your council to attain his full power and overcome some aspects of his upbringing. There is little more that I can see over the millenia other than this."
"Is he cute?" asked Venus.
Queen Serenity decided to ignore that particular question, focussing on what she considered the important bits. "Something has twisted time and space, and folded it, which makes it difficult to see how things develop. Yet another possibility is of someone else gaining control of you, someone dark and evil, and whose presence in time is like that of a fat and greasy mind. That ends even worse, I think, though the details are as viewed through a frosted glass."
"The Enemy has a tendency to scramble the timestream and magical attempts to see them simply by their presence," said Pluto. "Else we would have known of them, and prepared."
"I'll start work on a containment unit," said Mercury. "Unless something else occurs, give me two weeks and I'll have something where we can wait it out. The difficult part will be something for you, My Queen."
"No," said Queen Serenity.
"My Queen?" Mercury asked.
"Your awakener is my descendent from his maternal line, though far and far distant the trace remains," said Queen Serenity. "Having glimpsed this, I cannot accompany you except to throw even this distant hope away. I shall retire to the Earth, and live out my natural span of years there, so that I may begin this line."
There were protests and complaints immediately, but Queen Serenity had spoken all that she was inclined to in this instance and merely left them to make their own plans. She knew the next few decades would be full of hardship and pain, and she would need to learn skills that had once been beneath her. Yet she was a Queen, for all that her kingdom was ash, and she would remain proud and resolute for what time she had left.
Present:______
Ranma stepped forward, and looked into the first tube, noting the flickering red light as he did.
A mummy. Literally. Whatever the person had looked like in life, there was only shriveled flesh, dry hair, and some kind of armor showing. What really set off an alarm in Ranma's mind was the position of the body, as if she'd been clawing at the lid of the thing but unable to get it to move.
For a brief moment his mind somehow filled in the blanks. Someone had been in this machine, it had failed, they'd awoken, and they'd been trapped - clawing and beating at the door when the handle there hadn't moved.
Ranma went to the next and stopped. This one had a flickering yellow light, but inside was a sleeping angel. She was beautiful, and while his exposure to the female half of the species had bordered on nonexistant - he knew enough to consider this the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.
"Wow," said Ranma, touching the lid right over the sleeping girl's tube. "Hey, that's cold!"
Then something happened that made Ranma cautious... sufficient that he leapt backward so violently that he was standing on another of the tubes.
The girl's eyes had opened and had looked right at him.
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(Posted Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:50)
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