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1) The Characters and Stories of Ranma ½ and Sailor Moon are Copyright © Rumiko Takahashi and Naoko Takeuchi respectively, and are used here without permission or license.
2) No claims to the above copyrights are made by the author of this work.
3) This is a work written for non-commercial use ONLY, and is not to be reproduced.
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Beginning Notes: Some of you know this, but some of you don't... This is the re-write of the original chapter two which I took down from public viewing a couple of hours after I first posted it. It's a bit longer than before and those who managed to read it before I took it down will notice that I end it at a different point. The last roughly one third of the original has been removed and will now have elements of it integrated into the beginning of chapter three. I've basically rewritten new content for everything past about the first quarter of text and what I've moved to chapter three from this chapter will be rewritten to fit better with what I've written here...
(V. 2.3)
The Dark Side of the Moon
By: Almech Alfarion (Child of Fire)
Chapter I: What the Future Brings
-o-o-o-o-o-
Bright lights, soft music, exquisite food, and lavish clothing. These were the main elements that made up the atmosphere of the three hundred seventy-forth annual gala ball hosted in celebration of the last peace treaty signed between the Earth and Moon Kingdoms. The Ballroom of the Terran Star Cruiser Providence's Will was second only to the one in the Royal Palace on Luna, but the immense ship provided a neutral ground between the kingdoms at its position at the First Lagrangian Point of the Earth and its only natural satellite. People milled about the room, dancing, gathering in groups along the edges, or going to and from the buffet prepared in a joint effort of both the Moon and Earth Kingdoms' Royal Chefs. A line of windows circling the perimeter of the ceiling provided a view of the proceedings below to those who wished to be here, yet still wanted to be apart from the ball itself.
Some of the attendants weren't here for political schmoozing or to have a good time however. One such individual was standing next to the wet bar, her long brown hair was held behind her ears with decorative pins and her white and gold dress showed off her figure quite nicely. She seemed to be observing the proceedings of the gala, but seemed content to watch as she sipped at a mildly alcoholic beverage that had its origins on Saturn. For some reason, no one came near her as she stood there, and no one thought it odd that such a beautiful woman would be without a partner so no one was close enough to hear her when she spoke to the air out of the side of her mouth.
"Ghost: Status report."
"I'm in position Firefly; Targets one two and three are walking away from the buffet towards queen bee; Targets four and five are watching Kingfisher from the corner near the band." came the reply over her communicator. "Firefly" interpreted this; Targets one two and three were walking from the buffet towards Queen Serenity while targets four and five were observing the eighteen year old newly crowned King Endymion from the corner near the orchestra pit.
Firefly set down her now empty glass and made her way to intercept the targets.
"Target Two has split off from one and three and is making his way to the wet bar." said Ghost over the com. Seeing her target, Firefly moved to intercept target two first. She passed him with no one noticing her make the pass and place a data pad she hadn't had before into her subspace pocket after slipping something into one of the pockets on his formal robe. A nasty little device that would make him terribly sick sometime in the next thirty seconds or so, forcing him to leave for the restroom where he would begin to quite literally puke his guts out...
She intercepted Targets one and three before they were half way between the queen bee and the buffet. They would meet similar fates to that of Target two very soon. She headed towards the orchestra pit and her final targets...
-o-o-o-o-o-
"Ghost" observed her partner from one of the private rooms along the line of windows circling the ball room. 'Good... Nabiki's making good progress.' She thought as she watched the first three targets make their way out of the ball.
Unlike her partner, Ranma was dressed more for practicality. She was up here instead of Nabiki because she didn't do subtle as well in formal settings, and Nabiki's pick-pocketing skills from their days on the streets made her the better choice for this kind of operation. Her plain black cargo pants, shirt and high-laced boots offered none of the glamour Nabiki's dress did and her hair was in its customary long braid. A semi-transparent visor sat over her eyes, allowing her to scan the throng below more easily. Nabiki was taking care of the last two targets now...
"Mission Complete. Status: Success." Nabiki chirped over her communicator and Ranma breathed a sigh of relief. Endymion was only crowned two weeks ago. Their Intel said that he was ready for the job, but that didn't make their last failure any less painful. Somehow the assassins that killed his father had slipped through Nabiki's information network. Nabiki had been so mad at the failure that she pulled out all the stops to trace where they had come from.
The trace had led them here; Five assassins after the newly crowned king. Their Intel told them that it was some fanatic group with heavy pro-unification leanings. Their goal seemed pretty straight forward. Kill the Terran Royal Family, and then simultaneously strike heavily populated areas on Earth using terror tactics causing planet wide unrest so that the Moon Kingdom would be forced to intervene and annex the planet as the newest member of the Moon Kingdom. They brought this to Setsuna and she approved the mission.
Ranma was rubbing her eyes as she looked away from the room below for the first time since the ball had begun. Plopping down in one of the comfortable chairs positioned for a good view of the far half of the ballroom she readjusted her visor over her eyes and switched to X-Ray just to have some fun and see what was going on in the rooms on the other side. 'Private party... Private party... Teenage make out session... business deals... Lone person standing next to the window while looking down the length of a rifle... private party... Wait what?'
"NIX'S LANCE! I repeat, NIX'S LANCE! Our Intel was OFF! Sixth previously unknown possible Hostile located! Subject appears to have some kind of long-range firearm! I'm calling off Mission Silence! Find someplace to go ZERO and get Kingfisher out of there!"
As Ranma screamed this into her com, she was running out of the private room and activating her ZERO Armour; a magical power armor summoned in a similar manner to her Senshi Armour, but less powerful due to the necessity to suppress her magical output. It had been developed for them by the scientists on Pluto for situations where there was a high chance of running into the Queen's Sailor Scouts because revealing themselves as Senshis Eris and Sol to the Queen was too dangerous at this time. A digital wireframe overlay of her ZERO Armour formed around her, soon followed by the materialization of the Armour itself. A glossy black and metallic gold full body-suit with matching power gauntlets, plated boots, and armor plates for her chest, back, and legs materialized over her clothes while a matching full helmet with antenna that looked like long, swept back, pointed ears materialized over her head making the braid coming out of the back of the helmet the only visible part of her body.
Picking up speed with the power of the transformation, Ranma ran as fast as she could towards her target and prayed she got there before they realized the original targets had already been taken care of...
-o-o-o-o-o-
Nabiki cursed when she heard the code phrase over her communicator. It referred to a particularly intense "Hot Drop" training exercise on Nix a few years back that dealt with faulty intel in a live fire zone with particular focus on protecting an individual from snipers. She had hoped to never have to apply it practically but fate seemed to have conspired against them…
She made her way outside the ball room as quickly as she could without drawing attention to herself. Magical illusion to make it so people ignored her or not, running out would have drawn attention. Finding a secluded corner and making sure no one was around to see, she activated her ZERO Armour. It matched Ranma's in design, but was patterned in white and gold instead. Her hair fanned out behind her as she ran back to the ball.
She made her way as quickly as she could towards Endymion once inside. Stealth was no longer a priority and people were screaming and dodging out of her way as she ran towards the young King. She ignored the flashes of light that signified that the Sailor Scouts who were in attendance had summoned their fuku's and was just about to reach Endymion when her com chirped again.
"Target confirmed! He's going to make the shot before I can get to him! Get Kingfisher out of there!"
-o-o-o-o-o-
Endymion was trying to enjoy himself. The recent death of his father still weighed on his mind, but his advisors had said that he should attend this ball for political reasons if nothing else. He needed to be seen as strong in the eyes of the people, which meant that he needed to be seen by the people as doing something.
So here he was, chatting with dignitaries. He hated it. Most of them either wanted something from him or wanted him personally. Senator Beryl was coming on particularly strong... Something was making him edgy though, but he couldn't quite place what it was. The food was good, and the music was pleasant, so what was setting him on edge?
He saw princess Usagi nervously walking towards him out of the corner of his eye. He had to silently chuckle at that name because it made her the "Rabbit on the Moon" if one spoke or understood Saturnian. For being such a hard assed bitch, the current Serenity had a decent sense of humor, but he still felt sorry for the princess because the joke wouldn't leave her until she took her mother's place and became the next Serenity.
Rumor had it that the thirteen year old was nothing like her mother. Kind and caring, always concerned for others, and a bit of a crybaby. That's what they said she was like, so it wasn't a surprise that she looked so nervous at the moment.
"K-king Endymion?" The voice broke him out of his musings and he looked down to see that the subject of his thoughts was standing in front of him.
"How may I help you princess?" He genuinely wondered what she wanted. She was still too young to enter the political arena, so that couldn't be it...
"I was... was wondering if you –" Her words were cut short by a scream that came from near the main doors to the ball room. People were running and clearing an isle in front of what had caused the commotion. A female figure in white and gold armor was charging straight at him. Four flashes lit different parts of the room as the Inner Scouts manifested their armor to take care of the threat, but they were too far away to get to it before it got to him.
He would have been just fine on his own, but the princess had frozen at the sight of the threat. Thinking fast, he grabbed her in an effort to protect her just before the figure reached him. He didn't expect the figure to leap towards him at the last second and tackle him to the ground, with him still holding the princess. A loud booming crack was heard over the screams just after the figure tackled him and the floor a few feet away from him exploded in a pattern similar to what he knew to be what old conventional powder weapons made when they struck their targets and not a moment after that one of the windows along the ceiling shattered and two figures tumbled through the air and hit the ground. One was wearing black and gold armor that matched the style of the white and gold figure on top of him, while the other was wearing some kind of military uniform and had its head covered by a mask. The bent ruins of a rifle lay on the ground a few feet away from them.
The figure on top of him got up to assist its companion and only then did he notice that he was lying on top of the princess. She had a far off look in her eyes as she stared up at him. He quickly got off of her and helped her to her feet and then assessed the situation. 'Two unidentified armored figures, one taking care of one unidentified militant and the other getting up from its fall, so which are the assassins?'
-o-o-o-o-o-
Ranma groaned, but no one but she could hear it due to the closed system her helmet provided with Nabiki's ZERO Armour and Setsuna's communications network. She ran into some patrolling security officers when she was making her way to her target and subduing them quickly without raising the alarm had still taken a sufficient amount of time to allow him to realize that the gig was up and take the first shot before she could reach him. She had struggled with the assassin for a moment after that in order to stop him from making a second but he tripped and pulled both of them out of the window and she had landed hard on her shoulder when she fell. Looking around as she rolled onto her knees, she saw Nabiki getting up off of King Endymion and going over to the assassin's unconscious form and quickly searching his pockets. 'Good, she got him out of the way in time... Ah shit...'
The Inner Sailor Scouts and Queen Serenity were out in full force. They were forming a perimeter around them and charging up spells in case of hostilities while moving to box them in and Ranma had a good idea why. It wasn't every day that two figures in concealing armor crashed a ball, not to mention that the armoured figures had a small reputation on Venus and Jupiter for causing a little trouble at a military base or two, though thankfully they were still nothing more than rumors. The only thing that would make it worse would be if Sailors Neptune or Uranus were here. They sure as hell weren't rumors on those worlds and Ranma was sure that those two in particular wanted blood for what she and Nabiki had done to the naval yards in Poseidon a year ago...
'Ah, good times...' She opened a channel to Nabiki, "Firefly, we got us a problem. Queen Bee and the Cheerleaders are taking an interest in our handiwork..."
"Roger that Ghost, I see them... I'm almost done... Hmmm... I'll need to analyze this when we get somewhere safe..." Ranma looked over to see that Nabiki was finishing a download on a data pad she had found on the assassin before she slipped her own back into a subspace pocket after scanning the rifle and several items he had on him. Her white armored double looked around for a moment before she spoke again, "I'm going to pull some theatrics first, but I recommend Escape Plan: Theta."
"Understood Firefly, I will wait for your signal." She finished standing up and prepared to run when her partner rolled the still unconscious assassin onto his stomach, picked him up by his collar, and began to drag him towards Endymion...
-o-o-o-o-o-
Endymion was still on guard, especially when he saw the figure pull a data pad out of what he recognized as a subspace pocket. That kind of tech was expensive for single troops, and the armor didn't look cheap either. Whoever these people were, they were professionals, and they had backing, and there were very few people who could afford that sort of thing at the level these armored mysteries' seemed to possess. So when he saw the figure that had tackled him start to drag the man she had been searching moments before towards him as its black double finished standing up he moved in front of the still somewhat stunned princess in a defensive gesture.
What he didn't expect was the figure stopping a little ways in front of him and lobbing the unconscious form towards him so that it landed a few feet in front of him. He could only stare at the spectacle in front of him. The armored figure clearly wanted him to take it, probably to have his people interrogate.
He looked back up in time to see the white figure saluting him in a distinctly non military fashion, as if to say "Good Luck" before the light around it seemed to bend and it disappeared. Its partner disappeared in a similar manner, only instead of light, shadows seemed to reach towards it, and twist around the figure, before it too disappeared without a trace.
"I want a full squad of Magi in here NOW! Those two were using magic and I want them found NOW before they can get away! Full interrogations when we find them. Move People! They can't hide forever!" Queen serenity yelled over the shocked throng.
That added a new dimension to the Earth King's worries as the people around him broke up and began to filter out of the ball room. The ball was over with this incident. He had a feeling that this would force him to miss a lot of sleep in the coming weeks as he worked to figure out what had happened tonight. He called to his own men to take the unconscious body lying in front of him to a safe place and to interrogate him when he woke up even as the Sailor Scouts dashed off to complete their own orders from their queen.
If those two had been using magic, though, then they were beyond what he had originally presumed about them. Earth had no mages itself, its royal line not being linked to the planet's mana like those of the other planets, but he knew that every citizen in the Moon Kingdom with enough magic potential to be able to use it was closely watched for signs of development to be taken away for officially sanctioned training if they managed to use magic on their own. Even then though, some slipped through the cracks, and those individuals were usually extremely dangerous whenever they were caught...
-o-o-o-o-o-
Corridor after corridor passed as Ranma made her way as stealthy as she could to the rendezvous point. Even with the cloaking magic, other mages could sense her as long as they were near enough. She had already had a couple close calls with the ever vigilant Sailor Scouts. After Nabiki had disappeared she had lost her partner completely, but she knew that her friend was close by. They were always close, even after Setsuna had brought them in, and the times that they were not, she felt empty, and she didn't feel empty now. It was strange, in a way, the connection she felt with the brunette. It had just seemed to grow as their magic had grown, until she was able to point straight at Nabiki as long as they were within a mile or so of each other, but it wasn't like the magic sense that every magic user had. It was stronger and more distinct, even though she couldn't tell exactly where her friend was at the moment due to the same dampening systems that kept her location hidden from her pursuers. More guards came around the corner ahead of her, shaking her out of her thoughts.
'Hmmmmm... Too easy.' She thought, smiling to herself, as the guards walked by the alcove she was in with their magic detecting scanners. It reminded her of what Ms. Meiou had told them when they had received their first ZERO Armour suits as she left the alcove and continued with no one the wiser...
-o-o-o-o-o-
- Twelve years ago -
"So where are we going?" Ranma asked as she and Nabiki followed their green haired guardian down a corridor with plain metal walls and the occasional security door off to the side somewhere under Castle Pluto that they hadn't been to before. They had learned quite a bit in their two years on Pluto and they were learning more every day. Magic and alchemy studies had been compounded with history, language, mathematics, and self defense courses. Nabiki seemed to love it, but it constantly frustrated the older girl that she was so much better than her in the more physical pursuits, and she had an uncanny knack for taking magical theory and turning it into something usable that would never have occurred to Nabiki. Despite this though, Ranma watched in awe as her brown haired friend devoured the rest of their studies, completely outstripping her in mathematics, alchemy, and language, already having mastered Plutonian, Jovian, and Terran and already working on Saturnian, in addition to the Lunar Common Standard they had learned growing up, where she was merely proficient in Plutonian and only starting to work on her Terran. Nabiki only allowed her to keep up in their history and spell casting and control lessons because she seemed to have as much trouble as Ranma in those...
Setsuna turned her head and raised an eyebrow at Ranma in a calculating manner as she continued walking, "I've been having some of my people develop something for you two for when you are older. It is still in its development stage, but they have managed to build a model that is usable for the both of you now. You will need to learn how to use it, and the sooner you do the better for everyone..."
Nabiki just looked skeptically at the Senshi before looking at Ranma who just shrugged her shoulders as if saying "The hell if I know..." They were used to this side of the Senshi. The woman could be frustratingly cold and cryptic at times, occasionally hinting at greater truths or knowledge of what is to come. Ranma had a feeling that the older woman was trying to keep her distance from them, but Nabiki wouldn't buy it, saying that that was just who the woman was.
Nabiki once shared her suspicions with her that the Time-Senshi might be using her powers to log their academic progress before hand, and plan the day's lessons around this future knowledge. She had bet Nabiki that she would make their next self defense class more even for her if she was right or Nabiki would take her to watch a junior Rocket-Ball tournament somewhere in Hades if she was wrong. She didn't actually expect her friend to walk up to the green haired woman and ask her.
She ended up trouncing her friend in self defense despite letting up considerably from her normal level, but the small smile she had seen on the Time Senshi's face as Nabiki walked back to her with that satisfied grin raised some questions in her mind...
Here it was again as they followed their guardian to their destination. Ranma couldn't see the woman's face after she had turned forward again, but she had become very good at reading a person's body language. The woman's steps were light and even and her posture was relaxed. Not the stiff, brisk pace she set whenever she was annoyed, stressed, or in a serious mood. It was almost as though she were amused by her question, though it didn't seem to take much to amuse the Time Senshi at times...
Eventually they came to a T intersection that lead off into identical long shiny metal halls to their left and right. In front of them was a large security door that opened to either side when Setsuna entered a pass code into the panel attached to it. Behind was a rather large room that appeared to be some sort of fabrication lab. Piles of paper and what Ranma presumed to be parts for whatever technology was being developed here sat on large tables along with the various tool chests, cabinets, saws, lathes, drill presses, and other industrial machines while people wearing lab coats, goggles and other protective clothing moved from place to place occasionally carrying something, or sitting at one of the tables while writing something, working with the machines or working on some piece of equipment or other.
Ranma took this all in as Setsuna lead them to a secure cabinet near the back of the lab where she entered another code into the panel to the side. As the panels slid up, they revealed what looked to be a pair of matte grey skin tight suits along with sets of matching metal plates and a pair of gauntlets, plated boots, what looked like a thin bracelet, and an open faced helmet for each of them.
Ranma and Nabiki looked on curiously as Setsuna began to speak, "These are the Mark One: Zero Environment, Reactive Output Armour Systems, or ZERO Armour for short. They are designed based off of a Senshi's armor, but with a few features that they don't have. Once you put them on and activate your magic for the first time, they will link to you and you will be able to summon them in the same manner as your Senshi Armour... Yes Nabiki?"
Nabiki had raised her hand when she heard the last sentence and was looking at Setsuna in confusion, "Um... Neither of us can summon Senshi Armour yet, so how would we be able to use this?"
Setsuna got a strange gleam in her eye and Ranma thought she saw the corner of her mouth twitch up a moment before her answer came, "While neither of you have successfully summoned your Senshi Armour yet these suits work a little differently." She reached into the cabinet and removed both of the bracelet like objects and handed one to Nabiki and the other to Ranma, "Until you are able to summon your armour on your own, these will provide a link to your suits through your magic. While wearing them on either wrist, twist it in a full rotation with the intent of activating the transformation firmly placed in your mind to activate them. To dismiss the armour, you simply will it away the same way as I have explained you will do once you are able to summon your Senshi Armour... Yes Ranma?"
Now it was Ranma's turn. Questions were coming to her as their guardian spoke and the one that was nagging at her the most came up first, "Umm... If we'll be able to use our Senshi Armour eventually, what do we need these for?"
Ranma thought she saw that almost smile on the older woman again before she began speaking, "Good question. The reason I had my people develop these is twofold. One, they will give you practice with your magic associated with your Senshi Armor before you are able to use it, and two, it will help keep you hidden when out on missions with a high probability of running into one of the Sailor Scouts or other mages loyal to the Queen."
Ranma and her friend were both looking at Setsuna in confusion now, so the woman continued in a lecturing tone, "As you both know, any sufficiently trained mage is able to sense the presence of other magic users around them, even more so if that person happens to be a Senshi and in their active, armoured state at the time because they are both more powerful, and the resonance of a Senshi's magic is slightly different than that of a normal mage but not enough to be identifiable in an inactive state. What these suits do to prevent the Queen, Sailor Scouts or any other mage from identifying you is suppress and scramble your outward magical projection instead of enhancing the amount of power you can use like your Senshi Armor would, even while it draws on your internal magic to reinforce its own defensive capabilities and passively enhance your physical capabilities. Casting offensive or external spells will be harder to do because of this and make it easier for more powerful scanning devices to get a more accurate reading on your magical signatures, but spells you cast on yourselves should mostly be unaffected."
Ranma and Nabiki were looking with greater interest at the grey suits before them. Through their training, they knew that it took a lot of effort to suppress their own powers to the point where a mage couldn't sense them when they weren't casting spells. That had been the first thing they had learned in their magical education because it wouldn't do if they went into the city and an inquisitor tagged them as unregistered magic users. For these suits to use technology to suppress their magic and still allow them to cast spells was amazing.
Setsuna motioned to one of the people in a lab coat with some kind of marking on his shoulders and collar that identified him as higher ranking than most of the others and he came to stand next to them. He was of average height and build and had thinning silver/purple hair, but otherwise looked remarkably young as he held out his hand for them to shake, "Greetings. My name is Doctor Carl Stanhope. I worked with Lady Pluto originally when she proposed the concept for the ZERO Armour System. When I got her call earlier today that she was bringing you two down here, I asked if I could be the one to walk you through how to use them, and to explain to you what to do if you encounter any problems. After all, this is still highly experimental."
He smiled warmly at them even as their faces fell. Ranma was very nervous after hearing that there could be problems, but she didn't really have a choice in the matter. She and Nabiki had learned early on that there were some aspects of their magic that would be closed to them without their armor and Setsuna had said earlier that this would allow them to practice with that magic so she paid close attention when Stanhope began talking again, "Now I see that both of you already have one of the activator bracelets, so if you could put those on your wrists we can begin..."
-o-o-o-o-o-
- Present -
Nabiki had reached the rendezvous point some ten minutes ago. She knew that Ranma wouldn't be able to follow her exactly after she had activated her cloaking magic. Along with their projected magical aura, the suits seemed to dull their magic senses a little, meaning that while a mage needed to be right next to them in order to sense them it also dulled their own more personal awareness of each other to the point where they only knew where the other was when within a few feet of each other. So it was with no small amount of surprise that she felt Ranma come up from behind and place a hand on her shoulder while she was still cloaked without her even noticing that their connection was back.
Nabiki almost jumped and attacked her younger friend when this happened before she realized that it was Ranma and not one of their pursuers. She had been just leaving the ballroom as Serenity had given her orders to have them tracked down and the guard coverage between there and the small cargo bay near the back of the ship that they were in now was intense. But instead of seeing an armored soldier or one of the Queen's Sailors when she turned around she saw the twisting shadows of Ranma's Shadow Cloak spell receding as she deactivated her cloaking magic to reveal the black and gold armor she wore even as the smaller girl made the hand signals to stay quiet. While their magical signal couldn't be tracked, any communications transmissions between them could be, even if they couldn't break through the encryption layers.
Nabiki deactivated her own cloak as Ranma pulled a small golden ball from her subspace compartment. It was another little device that Dr. Stanhope had made for them called a scrambler. Based off of the redhead's chaos magic, it would generate a powerful chaotic residue and make the signature left by a teleport untraceable. Ranma twisted it around the middle to activate it and for a moment something like a multi color fog poured out of the ball before she twisted it the other way leaving the area around them resembling a quickly fading techno-color fog bank.
Ranma held out her arm for Nabiki to grab on to before activating her teleportation magic and they both disappeared from the ship.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Twisting colors and a feeling of literally being dragged everywhere were all Nabiki felt for a few moments before it suddenly stopped and she collapsed on her hands and knees after letting go of Ranma's arm. Panting heavily, she dismissed her ZERO Armour before collapsing onto the living room floor of their safe-house in Ares completely and rolling onto her back while clutching her stomach. She laid her head back onto the soft carpeting to try to help alleviate the pounding headache she usually associated with having had too much liquor before saying "I'm never going to get used to that am I..."
Ranma dismissed her own ZERO Armour and flopped down into one of the chairs with a sigh before replying. "If you aren't used to it by now then I'd say no..."
Nabiki just groaned and rubbed her eyes. She hated it whenever she had to teleport with Ranma. It always made her feel sick and tired and gave her the worst migraines, but her own light based teleport was much easier to track, even through chaos magic interference, and Ranma's shadow shift power could only be used in the immediate area or for short distance jumps. Getting up and moving to sit down on the couch she took her data pad and five others out of her subspace pocket. "While we're here we may as well go over some of this data..." she said with a sigh while connecting the extra pads to hers.
Ranma pulled her own pad out of subspace and connected it to their network with her own sigh. "I don't see why you can't just send this to Setsuna's or your own people to have them analyze it..."
"I know, but I like to look over things first." was Nabiki's response. Ranma sent her a dirty look and she just tiredly grinned back. While her own information network was very good at digging up information that others didn't want found and Ms. Meiou's was even better, she liked to see what was going on with her own eyes before sending off her analysis to her people to look over further. It also helped them get a better idea of what to look for...
Letting go of a yawn, she turned her attention back to the data in front of her. Most of it was gibberish. Pages and pages of messages, notes, and other assorted data, meaningless by themselves but together forming a greater whole, passed before her eyes, even as she felt her concentration wavering with her exhaustion as the minutes passed. She had been awake for well over three days by now, first making last minute changes to the mission plan, then preparing for it and carrying it out, and now she was pushing herself to stay awake with her last legs to the point where her sleep deprivation training wasn't helping her much as she went over the data. In contrast, Ranma was almost wide awake, having been able to get some sleep in before the mission. She felt herself slipping off to sleep as something heavy jumped into her lap and dreams of the past began to claim her...
-o-o-o-o-o-
- Seven Years Ago -
It was dark in Hades City and Charon was hanging low in the sky while Nix and Hydra claimed higher places for the time being. Nabiki could see the scant rays of sunlight indicating that a bright plutonian morning was still a few hours away, just over the horizon. Surprisingly despite being the smallest planet in the system Pluto rotated in such a way that its rotation took almost six and a half earth days on average. Despite this difference in periods of light and darkness, everyone in the Lunar Kingdom used the same yearly calendar and twenty four hour day time frame that Earth did, no matter what planet or moon they were on at the time, so the different periods of light and darkness didn't change the fact that Nabiki's watch told her that it was 2:47 in the afternoon. Nabiki always thought that it was odd that they used the Earth calendar instead of a decimal based system considering that Terra was only a protectorate, but beyond that she gave such thoughts little importance. It was minor compared to what Ms. Meiou was teaching them, but today even those thoughts were pushed to the side.
Today was Ranma's fifteenth birthday and Ms. Meiou had given them the whole day off. Her birthday gift was taking her younger friend to a game of Rocket-Ball and she had been able to get them front row seats. Pluto's Rocket-Ball circuit wasn't nearly as advanced as those of the inner planets, and this game was a minor league match, but that didn't make the fast paced sport any less popular.
The seats that Nabiki had gotten were at what could roughly be termed ground level outside of the outdoor stadium they were in. More seats rose into bleachers behind them, but in front of them was a seven meter deep oval depression with brown stone walls and a packed dirt floor, fifty meters across at its furthest ends, narrowing to about thirty five meters in the middle and providing an illuminated contrast to the dark stands, which Ranma told her was called "The Pit". Nabiki knew enough about the sport to know that it was officially called an "Arena" but the shorter redhead sitting to her right was a fanatic who tried to play the game as often as she could and knew the slang that players and fans used from front to back.
The players, three to a team, had already walked into the center of the pit where a softball sized ball called a "Quip", or "Jerry" as Ranma called it for whatever reason, hovered about half a meter above the field. She didn't know the players, or as Ranma called them, "Pit Dogs" names, not having paid attention to the announcers, but the six people surrounding the quip in the middle of the field only wore simple shin and arm guards over their uniforms for protection and each carried a long pole, which Ranma surprisingly didn't have an alternate name for, called a "Racket". The shaft that they held onto was a little short of a meter long. Attached to one end was a wide hammer head, called a "Maul" by Ranma, while attached to the other end and adding about half a meter of length to the racket was a scoop like head, which Ranma called a "peeler", which was roughly ten centimeters wide for its entire length and deepest in the middle at about five centimeters but tapering off and flattening out to form a basket like shape as it neared the ends. The racket was used to pass the quip to teammates or to try to put the it into the opposing goals, called "Jerry Holes" by Ranma, which were circular holes about a meter in diameter set at the far ends and just above the pit's floor, using either the hammer head to strike the quip at your target, or to catch it with the peeler and either carry it or make a shot or pass by flinging it outward, which happened quite often in a game considering that there was a rule that unless the player was standing still they couldn't hold onto the quip for more than five seconds, and each team would make sure that standing still would be nearly impossible...
The game was just starting now. The pit dogs were doing some last minute stretches and posturing to the opposing team before the quip was suddenly launched high into the air and fell back down where it was intercepted by someone's maul before it had the chance to reach the ground. From then on it was like watching some chaotic dance as the ball moved at nearly blinding speeds from player to player as they ran around the pit, occasionally bouncing off of the wall as part of a combination move. Within the first five minutes alone it had traded sides seven times and each player was sporting bruises from when they had been checked by another player or hit with the speeding jerry as it flew through the air, only occasionally being to block an attempt to score. Hitting another player with a racket, however, was grounds for a foul so there were no bruises from that. One side managed to score three times and secured the win for this set. There were still eight sets to go before the match's winner would be decided though...
To Nabiki's right, Ranma was leaning forward, almost going over the low barrier that separated them from the pit. She had an almost manic grin on her face and her eyes showed an excitement that Nabiki could barely begin to fathom. She liked the sport. It was fun to watch and ok to play as long as she was on the same team as Ranma, but she didn't have the same obsession that her friend had for it. Manic fan or not though, she was enjoying the game, and the fact that Ranma seemed to be having as much fun, if not more, as she was made her happy that her friend was enjoying herself...
A little less than half an hour passed before the third set ended. Ranma sat back down as the announcer loudly proclaimed that the first intermission would have a couple of the local pee-wee teams going at it. The red head smiled as Nabiki stood up to stretch. It had only been a couple years ago, but Ranma had played with and against both of the teams playing in the pit below. She was much too old for that league now, but they were still fond memories, even though she had never actually officially been accepted into a team. Setsuna had told them that joining a team would be dangerous because such records were still looked into by the Queen's enforcers to check for people that didn't have a past like they did, but Ranma was definitely good enough where one of the teams would let her play a match or two with them every once in a while if she wanted to with no questions asked...
The pee-wee's weren't nearly as good as the older pit dogs that had been playing before, but Nabiki knew that everyone had to start somewhere. In fact, she could see the raw talent that would take them to the top if nurtured correctly in a couple of them even now. She stretched again before heading to the bathroom to return a few minutes later.
By the time she retook her seat, Nabiki had missed the rest of the pee-wee's and the main match was just beginning again with set number four and Ranma began her ascent over the edge of the pit with that grin firmly in place once more...
By the time the sixth set ended Ranma was nearly jumping up and down with excitement. Both teams were neck and neck with equal wins and losses. She sat back down and took a sip of the drink she had bought a few minutes ago. The announcer's magically magnified voice washed over them as the players walked off the field for a short break, "Ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of Set Number Six! My-oh-my, what an exciting game this has been!" Down below there was a woman walking out onto the field carrying a long, colorful box. When she reached the middle she held it up for everyone to see and the announcer continued, "Now ladies and gentlemen, we will have the match drawing. If your seat number is called you will have the chance to win this brand new, state of the art, Rocket-Racket. It's the latest design, guaranteed not to slip in your grip and new technology in the shaft helps give you that extra kick when you let that quip fly! And now the drawing!" a drum roll was played over the stadium and a few seconds passed before it ended with a flourish and the announcer came back on, "And the Lucky spectator with the chance to win this wonderful Racket is seat number A-47! Would the spectator in seat A-47 please come to the ticket booth where you will be directed to the Arena!"
Ranma had gone ridged when the announcement had been made. It took Nabiki a moment to figure out why... The redhead was in seat A-47. This was almost too much for her to handle and if she hadn't known better, Nabiki would have had to say that Ranma had used her chaos magic to tip the odds in her favor, but the younger girl wasn't nearly that proficient with her powers yet, and she hadn't felt a spike of magical energy from her friend either...
Slowly, Ranma stood up from her seat and walked towards the ticket booth. By the time Nabiki saw her walk onto the field the redhead had calmed down considerably, but anyone who knew the newly turned fifteen year old like Nabiki did knew the focused look on her face and what it meant for anyone who got in her way if she had a racket in her hands and there was a jerry in the air...
Nabiki was tuning out what the announcer was saying, completely focusing on Ranma. She hoped that the girl wouldn't do anything foolish or showboat too much. Hoping for the girl to not show off at all was usually an exercise in futility...
Down in the center of the field stood Ranma with the prize racket that was all but guaranteed to be hers by the end of this charade in her hands. On either end of the pit, defending the jerry holes was one pit dog from each team. Apparently, to win, you needed to score past this defender like a penalty shot. If it was a penalty shot then Ranma would have three tries at each goal and in order to win she would have to score in both goals...
For anyone else this would be very difficult, but Ranma was another story entirely. By the time they were twelve Nabiki had been sure that if she had had the opportunity, Ranma could have stood on even turf with one of the inner system prow league players, and she had only gotten better since then. This wasn't even a contest.
Down on the field, the woman who had held up the prize was handing Ranma a quip. Ranma took it with a nod and placed it in the peeler. Nabiki knew what was coming next, but the crowd was in for a show. The defender seemed to be saying something to Ranma. Reading lips was an easy enough thing to learn, considering that Nabiki was already fluent in every in-system language besides Mercurian, which was unnecessarily complex in her opinion. The dark glint she saw creeping into Ranma's eyes through her game-face was understandable if she had read his lips right. He had apparently called her a little girl who should just go home and let the men play a man's sport. Nabiki almost pitied the poor fool...
Slowly, Ranma raised the racket so that it was level with the ground with the shaft tucked under her arm and the maul just behind her shoulder. In a sudden upward motion the ball was airborne. As it fell, she quickly spun the racket around so that the peeler was now behind her head with the shaft held in both hands as she prepared her attack. What happened next was hard to follow for most of the spectators. They had been expecting her to make her three shots and move on, but after she had caught the quip with her peeler and launched it towards the goal it was little more than an indistinct afterimage of the flying projectile as it streaked across the field. The defender didn't have a chance to even lift his racket to try to deflect the speeding ball as it passed close enough to his head to move his hair with its wake before going into the goal. He was standing frozen where he stood mere centimeters from being concussed by the redhead when he felt another, less intense yet still quite powerful, gust of wind pass on the other side of his head as she reached up with her peeler to catch the returning jerry before he fell down to land on his backside in shock.
Now normally there was a net in the back of a jerry hole to catch the quip when a goal is made. What most people don't know, or don't pay enough attention to care about though, is that there is usually a small lip around the edge of the net in the back. Ranma had aimed the ball so that it would ricochet off of this lip and come back out so that it would pass by the other side of his head on purpose. Nabiki knew that in Ranma's mind, justice had been served for the slight against her feminine pride.
Down on the field Ranma had turned towards the other defender. She still had the quip nested in her peeler and was spinning the racket around in arcs that were slow enough so that it wouldn't fly out unless she stopped her spinning and let it fall. Her second opponent was visibly nervous, but much better prepared to face her than the first had been. He was holding his racket up in a defensive manner but it still wouldn't be enough. Spinning her racket around one last time she flung the quip into the air once more. On its return she used her maul to strike the ball so that it would hit the wall just to the left of the goal, but close enough to look like it would go in to the defender, using her first of three shots. By the time the ball returned to Ranma from the ricochet he was badly out of position having fallen for the fake-out and she neatly put it in the jerry hole with her peeler using her second shot.
To say that the crowd was stunned was an understatement. Here was a teenage girl who had just thoroughly handed seasoned players their own asses. Minor league players sure, but still people who were good at what they did. Spinning the racket around and resting it across her shoulders, Ranma walked out of the pit as the announcer proclaimed her the winner and made a few more announcements, snapping the crowd out of their stunned silence and whispered conversations sprang up like wildfires. A few minutes later the volume level had risen slightly as the players were marching back onto the field and Ranma came back to retake her seat next to Nabiki. She had a content smile on her face as she cradled her new implement of fear for whomever so dared to oppose her down in the pit in the future. "Best birthday gift ever..." she whispered so that only Nabiki could hear.
Nabiki just smiled in return. She hadn't planned for this to happen, but it had. It was definitely a good gift, especially for the price at only the cost of the tickets. Good rackets were expensive and at the allowance they currently received from Setsuna she couldn't have afforded one like this. The game resumed, but Ranma showed less enthusiasm for the goings on down in the pit as she had before. She was examining her new acquisition, testing the amount of flex and level of grip the shaft had which were both important to how she played due to her flexible style that involved a lot of changes in her grip and hand position and no small amount of trick shots.
It was almost the end of the ninth set when Nabiki noticed that they were being watched. Some were just curious, but others were looking at Ranma as if considering something. Then it hit her. 'Of course! This is a minor league match. There are probably a couple talent scouts out here looking for people who might cut it in the majors... Damn this is going to make it harder to duck out after the match...' She leaned over to Whisper in Ranma's ear, "When the match is over we need to get lost in the crowd..."
"Hu? Why?" was Ranma's less than disguised reply.
"You seem to have caught the interest of more than a few people who would want to find out who you are of the talent scout variety at least..." She hissed back.
Ranma's face clouded over at this. Talent scouts were bad in their own way because they needed to do thorough background checks on whoever they recruited and usually started before they even approached you. Such searches usually led to questions that they were prepared to answer, but still didn't want to have to... But if it was more than just talent scouts, say an off duty enforcer or two, then they were in real trouble.
The match ended shortly after that and the two of them went about hiding in plain sight. This was an aspect of their training that Setsuna had implemented a couple months after they had first received their Z.E.R.O. suits and had gotten familiar with how they worked, and they were both equally skilled in the arts of not being seen when they didn't want to be, even without the aid of their magic. Caught in the push of the crowd around them, they slowly made their way to the street.
The sun was still a few hours away from coming up, but more light was piercing the magical amplification provided by the planetary environmental wards. At this point in the Plutonian day the refraction of the amplified sunlight turned the sky into a tie-dye swirl of every color. The day would be bright and sunny when the sun fully came up due to the wards, despite the fact that the sun itself would still be a small bright speck in the sky. For now though, the two of them walked down the street and away from inquisitive eyes. Ranma was holding her prize so that it wouldn't be visible above the heads of the crowd and they slowly made their way to the nearest alleyway and ducked out of sight.
Half an hour later they were walking down a street in another part of the city. Ranma had found something to wrap her new racket in to help hide it from view and a few straps that she tied to the shaft, making a sling, so she could carry it on her back. It was getting close to supper time and they had stopped at a street vendor a few minutes ago and were now munching on a sort of fruit filled pastry that was supposed to be quite popular on Venus while slowly making their way back to Charon Castle. They were walking past a side street when they heard a loud noise and something that sounded like a muffled scream.
Looking around to make sure that no one was looking they ducked into the deeper darkness of the side street and followed the noise to where they thought it had come from. What they found wasn't what they had expected. Cornered between a dumpster and the wall of a building by a pack of stray dogs was a very small orange cat with slightly darker orange stripes. What surprised them was the human like expression on the cat's face and the circular patch of brown fur in the center of its forehead.
This meant that it wasn't a cat, but a Mau, and one that wasn't bound to a mage either if the absence of a symbol on its forehead were any indicator, and judging by the ruffled state of its fir and the amount of dirt it had on it, it probably didn't have a home either. Mau were rare, and ones that weren't bound were even rarer, but at the same time they were intelligent beings who qualified for citizenship, even if they couldn't make it any better than second class citizens like any other 'non human' race that took up residence among the planets of the Sol System and they had their lives even more closely monitored than even most of those due to their highly magical nature. Even the Mau in the royal courts primarily took on secondary roles regardless of the significantly better treatment they received than their peers.
Nabiki and Ranma had a choice to make. They could either leave it here and walk away like nothing had happened or they could help it and suffer whatever consequences would come from it. If they helped it they ran the very high risk of someone tracking it back to them and if they accidently bound it to one of them then the symbol that would claim its forehead would be a beacon for anyone looking for an unregistered mage because mages for Sol or Eris weren't supposed to exist at all. Looking at each other for a moment they came to a silent agreement and nodded to each other with grim looks appearing on their faces.
Ranma was in motion before Nabiki and had her new racket in her hands faster that Nabiki would have thought possible for anyone else. Using the peeler she picked up a large piece of masonry that had fallen off of a wall and flung it at one of the dogs, making it yelp in pain and start to run away. At the same time, Nabiki had charged in, grabbing a pipe from a nearby refuse pile and began wielding it like a sword against the dogs. Before thirty seconds had passed every dog was either running away with its tail between its legs while yelping in pain or lying on the ground unconscious.
When they looked around to check on their handiwork they both noticed that the Mau was missing before they heard a clang from behind the dumpster. Walking over Nabiki noticed that there was a small space between the wall and the dumpster where the neo-cat had crawled into. It looked out at her through the darkness with glowing amber eyes and shrank back further into the shadows. Crouching down, she held out her hand in a placating gesture.
It took a few minutes but eventually the Mau came out of its hiding spot and allowed her to pet it. It was young, just old enough where it wasn't a kitten, and obviously hungry. Nabiki still had a little bit of her fruit pastry snack left and gave it to the fur-ball, which it greedily ate up, almost nipping at her fingers. It looked up at her with its pitiful yellow eyes as if asking for more and Nabiki looked at Ranma who just rolled her eyes before handing over the rest of hers. When it was done it began purring and quite forcefully rubbing up against Nabiki's hand. They caught a good enough glimpse of under its raised tail that told them that this one was a girl. "Can you talk?" she asked it in lunar standard.
It stopped its rubbing and looked at her for a moment before shrugging and managing to stutter out "L-litt-le b-it-t" in broken plutonian with a high soprano. Nabiki frowned slightly. A Mau of this one's age should at least be able speak one language fluently but while this one seemed to understand Lunar it had answered in fractured Plutonian telling her that it probably understood both languages but could only speak some of one. She guessed that it was a little over seven months old due to the speed at which the furry aliens matured. Mau matured and learned incredibly quickly even though they were just as long lived as their human companions. If this one ever received an education it would reach the level that she and Ranma were at now in less than a quarter of the time.
"So... where are your parents?" She kindly asked it, switching to Plutonian because that seemed to be its preferred language.
Its face took on a very sad look and it hung its head, "G-gone" was its answer. They could see small tears coming to its eyes and Nabiki reached out and began scratching behind its ears. Gone could very well mean many things but considering its limited vocabulary and the neo-cat's appearance it was probably safe to assume that gone meant dead. After all, it was being chased by dogs when they found it and Mau were notoriously protective of their young. If it had had parents then at least one of them would have been there to protect it unless they thought that it would be safe.
"So... you got a name?" she asked it, not unkindly. It shook its head in the negative as a response, still silently weeping.
Ranma was looking around now with a thoughtful look on her face. "Uh... Nabiki? We gotta go soon. Ms. Meiou is expecting us back in about an hour..."
Nabiki just looked at the Mau and pouted. It was barely older than a kitten and it seemed so lonely. "I gota go now little one. Stay out of trouble ok?" Giving it one last pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears she stood up. She looked back down at the neo-cat which was now looking up at her in confusion. She sighed and began following Ranma out of the alley.
Neither of them noticed as the neo-cat began to follow them with a determined expression on its face, or the way that the brown patch on its forehead seemed to fade into orange to match the rest of its fur, even as parts of it faded further to form a gold circle with a dot in the middle...
- End Flashback -
-o-o-o-o-o-
Conciseness slowly came back to Nabiki. She was going over the end of her dream in her mind, filling in the blanks of what had happened between then and now. The Mau had followed her all the way back to castle Pluto and managed to stay hidden from even Setsuna for three weeks before it found the room she and Ranma shared and Nabiki woke up one morning with the troublemaker curled up on her chest. Needless to say, Ms. Meiou was not happy about it but there wasn't anything she could realty do considering that it had been the Mau's choice to bind itself to her magic and not an accident. A few refresher courses that took a couple months and the Mau race's natural intelligence brought it up to speed to where she was able to join Ranma and herself in their regular classes.
The first thing that she noticed as her awareness of her surroundings came back to her was that she was lying down instead of sitting up like she had been when she had fallen asleep. The second thing was a warm weight on her face and something fuzzy rhythmically batting at her cheek in one second intervals. Reaching up, she grabbed the offender under her front leg joints and pulled away while opening her eyes.
Looking down at her through reproachful amber eyes and an obviously sarcastic frown was a now fully adult, female, orange tiger-striped Mau with a golden symbol for the sun on its forehead. "And I was just starting to get comfortable" she said in a now mature female voice while cracking the fake frown with a grin, "So, how'd it go? Ranma won't tell me anything."
There was a shout of "Hey!" from the direction of the kitchen and Ranma stuck her head around the door, "That's because you won't let me. Always interrupting me whenever I try!" She retracted her head while grumbling and returning to whatever she was doing in the kitchen.
The Mau shot a dirty look towards the kitchen door and opened its mouth to retort but Nabiki cut her off, "Now Amaterasu, its hardly fair to Ranma if you blame her for not answering questions if you don't give her the chance." The impish grin on her face blunted the words. Nabiki knew perfectly well that those two had a love hate relationship similar to those of siblings. They would argue constantly, but it almost seemed like a contest to see who could argue for the sake of arguing better than the other at times. She rarely took sides in these spats but this time there was something she wanted to know, "How long have I been out?"
Ranma walked back into the living room while holding a pot of coffee, "Only a couple hours..." She handed Nabiki a cup and set the pot on the table after pouring herself some of the dark liquid. Ranma was typing something on her data pad before Nabiki heard a ping come from hers "I did find a few things while you were snoozing but not much..."
Picking up her data pad after pouring herself a mug and taking a long drag at the black gold in a cup before refilling it to the top, Nabiki opened the file that Ranma had highlighted for her. "Hmmm... Serial numbers for their equipment and marching orders..." She scanned over these for a few minutes before sighing, "They're more organized than I thought they would be... Weapons paid for in cash and delivered by unmarked armored trucks to a neutral location on Terra. No mention of who their leaders are or whoever is backing them. Everything we had on them before this said that until a few months ago they were mostly harmless and now we can't find anything on their leadership except that the old leading body was replaced and the new one hidden before anyone could find anything on them a couple weeks before they got their backing... The Lunar Brotherhood... so that's what they're calling themselves now..." She set down the data pad and started rubbing her eyes while Amaterasu jumped on her shoulders and draped herself around her neck like a furry scarf. "I'll forward what we have to my network later."
"Whoever is behind all of this knows what they're doing... I wouldn't put it past them to have had all of this planned out mostly in advance before they involved these 'brotherhood' people, maybe even years in advance... The organization itself is obviously just a patsy as they were too ignorant and disorganized before our unknown third party stepped in, but it does make an effective cover..." Amaterasu was looking at Nabiki's data pad from her spot on the brown haired girl's shoulder. Her brows were furrowed and she had a thoughtful look on her face.
Ranma put down her own data pad with a stretch and a yawn, "I don't know about any of that, but I'll agree that this whole thing is fishy." The Mau's ears twitched at hearing "fish" but otherwise made no response to the barb while Ranma continued after taking a sip of her coffee, "I doubt that this is over though. They may not have been before, but they're too organized now to not have a backup plan in case this one failed... give it a few weeks for the heat to blow over but they'll be back."
Nabiki nodded in agreement and Amaterasu hung her head in thought when a tone sounded from the data pads. Recognizing it as an incoming transmission from Setsuna they ran the decryption sequences and opened a secure connection. The face of a somewhat ruffled Setsuna appeared on the screens.
"Do you two know how much trouble you've caused?" her voice was strained and she had wisps of hair going off at odd angles. They rarely got to see their boss like this, but when they did they were usually in trouble.
"Ahaha... Slightly less than that time they found our safe-house in Athena?" Nabiki knew that her strained smile was far from convincing and she could see Ranma wincing from the faux-pas to never speak about that incident again out of the corner of her eye, but an angry Setsuna was not something either of them made a point of dealing with often and she needed an out.
The green haired Senshi frowned and sighed, "Ok, so this op wasn't nearly as bad as when that one went all FUBAR but what happened to not being caught in your ZERO Armour on the five-o'clock SMNN broadcast? Now everyone and they're uncle has seen you and the Media Department is spinning it like we're the bad guys!" She was yelling now and even the Mau draped over Nabiki's shoulder was wincing even though she wasn't the target of the Time Senshi's ire...
"The only reason the Queen isn't commanding me to find out where you two came from is because you two used your cloaking magic so now she knows that you're planetary mages, but she doesn't know where you came from or which planets are your anchors." The green haired woman was starting to deflate now, but she wasn't done yet, "I'm just lucky I still have standing orders to 'search for outside threats' so internal matters like this don't have me running to Luna as fast as I can to report... I'll more thoroughly chew you out later though. For now I have missions for the both of you now that you've got this proverbial shit storm blowing and bumped us ahead of schedule seven months..." Setsuna was rubbing her eyes on the other end of the connection and Ranma and Nabiki perked up a little at the mention of a reprieve, if only temporary. Even Amaterasu slid off of Nabiki's shoulders to land in her lap where the brunette subconsciously began scratching the Mau behind her ears.
"I'm splitting you two up for this one. Don't look so disappointed Ranma. You'll more than likely get to see some action on this one. I'm having you look into Princess Hotaru of Saturn. Full details will be in your briefing but the gist of things is our information says that she has a sympathetic nature for the common folk. She also shows aptitude for Saturn's magic in stronger levels than her older sisters making her the most likely to inherit the mantle of Sailor Saturn from her mother in seven months when her grandmother steps down from the throne." Setsuna had folded her hands in front of her face and was talking in a lecturing tone they all knew well from their years under her tutelage. "These combined with some other factors have made her a target. There have been several attempts on her life already, all failing, but no one has been able to track them back to where they're coming from despite the fact that they all seem to be organized with each other... Unless things get worse I doubt that she's in any real danger but I want you to look into where they're coming from and evaluate where exactly she stands... Maybe we can have another Senshi with us when we move on to stage three if she checks out. If you don't think that her guards can handle things on their own then you can step in and lend a hand but otherwise stay out of the way and out of sight."
Ranma nodded, "Alright, but I want to make a detour to Eris before I head out to Saturn. I've been going over some of my old notes from Magical Theory and I think I figured out how to make a talisman... I... want to see if I can make one for myself, seeing as the old one was destroyed in the fall..." Her voice fell off slightly at the last part, but the determined look on her face was proof of her resolve. Nabiki just stared at her friend who had just said that she had possibly reinvented something that was supposed to have been lost to the annals of time with little more than the guesswork Ms. Meiou had given them years ago when they had been studying artifacts of power and how they were made. Talismans especially weren't anything like a staff or other mundane magical focus which merely drew on the wielders innate magic and allowed them to use more than they normally could. A talisman was supposed to be bound directly to the planet of its focus and the Senshi who used it making them all the more powerful. Both were things that only the first Serenity had known how to do and the secrets had supposedly died with her...
Likewise, Setsuna's surprise at the redhead's words was on display over the connection but she recovered quickly, "Alright, but I'm only giving you a week. After that you have to head to Saturn, talisman or no talisman..." Ranma nodded her acceptance of these terms. Setsuna cleared her throat to get everyone's full attention again, snapping Nabiki and Amaterasu out of their surprise, "As for you two..." she said, addressing Nabiki and the orange Mau sitting in her lap, "You will be going to earth. Have your people look into whatever you pulled off of the six you offed earlier because I'm having you take a closer look at these people. Keep an eye on Endymion also because we can't have him going to the next life. That would push things to the contingency and none of us want that..." she paused at the mention of the contingency. They all knew the plan Setsuna had laid out. It was a sound plan, but there were things beyond their control that could ruin their efforts irreparably. The contingency was the backup plan in case this happened, but none of them wanted to think of what would happen if it came to that. If things went too far out of their control or capability to compensate for, however, then it would be necessary...
"Full details will be in your briefing and your transport leaves in six hours under the reservation of 'Tendo'." the green haired woman finished in a somewhat subdued voice before letting out a sigh. "Good luck, to both of you, and try to stay out of trouble, OK? Setsuna out." The smile on her face and the playful humor in her voice were quite obvious before she cut the connection and the occupants of the safe-house began preparing for their next missions...
-o-o-o-o-o-
Back on Pluto Setsuna let out a long, draw out, sigh before smiling to herself. Those three could be a handful at times, even though they were no longer children. But no matter how many times they did things that got on her nerves, she couldn't stay mad at them for very long.
Looking back over the years, she marveled at how the way she viewed them had changed over time. In the beginning she had tried to distance herself from them emotionally. They were her wards, but they were also keystones in helping her bring justice back to the system. Over time, however, she had found it harder and harder to maintain the emotional detachment necessary for her self imposed role as their commander. She would catch herself wondering if they were safe whenever they went out into Hades to shop or attend events or worrying over the bruises that Ranma got whenever she played Rocket-Ball. She sighed as these memories came up and leaned back in her chair a bit more. Back then she had needed to remind herself quite often that they might look like children, but their time living on the streets had made them far older than individuals of their age should need to be... and that she wasn't their mother and they knew how to take care of themselves.
Ranma had been the one to realty make her realize that how she saw them was changing. The girl's blunt openness about her opinions could be disarming at times, once making her drop some paperwork she had been carrying when the girl had called a noble that had just left a meeting with the Time Senshi a "stupid ass". Setsuna happened to agree, but she thanked her lucky stars that the girl seemed to have the sense to not say that to the man's face. She couldn't lie to save her life either when she had first come to Charon Castle but put her up to conning the cooks out of extra food and she could tell you that up is down or black is hot pink and you would need to double check just to make sure that they weren't. She had found the antics annoying at first, but over time they became amusing, and then endearing...
Nabiki had been a harder read, and having just this side of five thousand years experience of dealing with people, that was saying something. In that first meeting, Setsuna had pinned her as a smart one, but the extent was astounding. Ranma was quite intelligent in her own right, being able to turn purely theoretical exercises into something useable, and now even going as far as to take half remembered guesswork from the conversations Setsuna had had with the first Queen Serenity about how she had made the talismans and possibly reinventing the process. Nabiki was a genius though. The girl couldn't do theory work very well, but give her a puzzle that had a logical system behind it and she would have it solved faster than anyone Setsuna had ever met in the past. Her cold logic could be frightening at times, but what had really thrown off the Time Senshi was the callous attitude she had taken towards everything as she got older. It had taken Setsuna five years before she realized that the girl was emulating how she saw the Time Senshi, even going as far as to make it her business to know about everything going on within her sphere of influence. She was impressed at the girl's ability to organize a detailed information network that reported to her within Charon Castle and extending over a good portion of Hades City by the time she was twelve and later when they turned eighteen was able to expand it to encompass the entire solar system when they began their missions, but it was still a bit disquieting that people seemed to view herself in this way...
She smiled as she remembered the first time she had ever caught the brown haired girl off guard. It was a few days after she realized that the girl was emulating herself and she had been feeling a bit depressed that people saw her as an all knowing ice queen until Ranma had walked right into her office after realizing why she was so depressed and quite blatantly claimed a place in her lap. The thirteen year old had then explained that she had never seen her like that, how she had seen through her guardian's cold mask from the very beginning and then briefly hugged her around the waist before suggesting that they pull a practical joke on Nabiki with a somewhat malicious grin. The look on Nabiki's face the next morning when she walked in to wake them up, while singing an old folk tune about the sun and the birds and the bees with a huge smile on her face had been priceless. Come to think of it, that was probably the first time that she had truly realized how much they both meant to her, and after that they had become more like a family, though she knew that she could never truly replace their parents...
She smiled to herself again at that. After that incident Nabiki had mellowed somewhat, but she still held onto her poker face when it wasn't just the three of them, and later adding Amaterasu into the group of people who got to know the real her. She frowned again as the mau came to mind. The orange trouble maker had been an unexpected addition to their little pseudo-family, but she had to admit that the neo-cat's presence had been a balancing factor for Nabiki's personality. Where Nabiki was quiet and reserved, hiding her true feelings from the public behind a cold and mysterious front, Amaterasu was loud and obnoxious making her opinions and feelings known almost as obtusely as Ranma did, but possessing little of the tact that Ranma showed occasionally. On top of that, she appeared to possess the same level of intelligence as both girls, solving logical problems with an uncanny agility, but in such creative ways that it seemed like she was reinventing and redefining what was and wasn't possible at times. Not entirely unexpected from a Mau, but even by their standards the sun-cat was a bit of a prodigy. Despite the differences in personality however the Mau seemed to share the same brain as Nabiki at times, taking the same information and coming to almost identical conclusions at the same time.
Things changed again when they started going off on missions though. They were necessary and they all knew why they were doing what they did, but Setsuna still felt a bit guilty about everything. She had educated them so that they would be ruthlessly efficient at what they did, but in that time she had gotten to know them much better as people than she had originally planned on. She had found herself going that extra mile to make sure that they would come back with as little incident as possible, or biting her nails whenever she couldn't, but the truth was that they were good at what they did, going above and beyond what she had ever dared to hope for in their mission performance. Things still went wrong from time to time, but it was rarely ever their fault.
She frowned again as this thought struck her. This last mission had been one of those screw-ups. Somehow, someway, that sixth assassin had gotten past their best efforts. They had only had a couple of weeks to plan but Nabiki had been out for blood at the first slip with the group that succeeded in assassinating the old king. The girl had squeezed everything she could out of her resources to find where they came from and what they planned, but still they had gotten something by her. The girl had never asked her to use the Time Gates to take a look at them, but it wouldn't have mattered. For some reason the gates were blind where these people were concerned and it unsettled the Time Senshi.
She was dealing with the fallout of all of this now, and would still be for weeks, maybe even months to come. Letting out a large sigh, she sat back up and turned to her console and began looking over her never ending, ever growing, pile of work...
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- End Chapter I -
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End Notes and Comments: So... rewrites aside, the main story line is still picking up fourteen years after the end of the Prologue... I've added some flashbacks into the intervening years and some thoughts about that time as well... Expect more of these little looks into the past as the story progresses, but after about chapter four or five they should end entirely unless something that I feel needs a little more explaining comes up...
Side note; Like the prologue, I have slightly revised this chapter's spelling, grammar and some of the dialogue and word flow… Nothing major like the rewrite, but I thought you'd like to know…
As I said in my notes at the end of the Prologue, I am experimenting with tearing away who the Ranma ½ characters are on the outside, and rebuilding them from what I see as their core personalities with the different childhoods and experiences. Ranma and Nabiki grew up on the streets for around five years and then were taken in by Setsuna for the next fourteen, which is now the present in the story, so their childhoods and experiences have been a lot different from what they are in the Ranma ½ Manga/Anime. Nabiki is going to be a lot harder but not any less calculating, and Ranma is going to be more balanced but still with a greater focus and talent for more physical pursuits due to the absence of a stable home in Nabiki's case and the absence of Genma in general in Ranma's. I'm pretty much going to do the same personality break down to the Sailor Moon characters if this story ever goes into detail about them, which is looking like a safe bet for some of them at least...
Please leave a review! I welcome constructive criticism and genuine advice (As long as that's all it is...). It helps me improve my writing in general. Pointing out where I make spelling and grammar mistakes is a plus too and I prefer if you actually point out where the trouble spots are, seeing as I can go back and fix them more easily that way.
