This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.
This story's main home is ranmafics。ru/fanfics/your_destiny_is_annulled/english .
(シーンブレイク)
Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5
Chapter 3,
Pluto's Last Stand.
(half an hour ago)
Pluto frowned as she re-tuned the space-time Door for the uncounted time. She didn't have a slightest idea what she was searching for. She didn't have a clue what made her wake up so early and go to comb the time stream time and again. Everything was eerily calm, but she couldn't get rid of a very bad feeling. This felt too much like a calm before the storm. Too serene a calm for it to be an ordinary storm.
After all, there was no other planet where the Life thrived so strongly. There was no other planet that attracted from the dark abyss of space things that man was not meant to know.
The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.
It all began in times forgotten, at the dawn of the Universe, when first seeds of Life were born of the Primordial Chaos. Being ephemeral self-contradictory irregularities in the flow of entropy, they fed on the very thing that should have dispelled them eroding them and washing away. And yet, the newborn Life had the gall to hold on, building in complexity, using the very flow to move against it like a sailboat tacking upwind.
The Chaos would have swept it away eventually, if not for the amazing transformation some of the ephemeral constructs underwent. Winding tighter and tighter under the pressure of entropy, these gained the hardiness of a diamond. And so the Star Seeds were born, heralding an eventual coming of the Sailor Age. Splitting the flow of Chaos, the Seeds allowed their lesser brethren to procreate and grow strong under their veil. Not having anything bigger than a bacteria to represent them, the Seeds manifested at first as supernatural anomalies. Sometimes it was an unexplainable fluctuation generating a bubble of cosmos with different properties allowing the Life to emerge and prosper. Sometimes it was an anomalous planet keeping, despite all odds, a circular orbit and reflecting even the strongest radiation with its mighty magnetic field. Sometimes it was an exceptionally successful mutation allowing the evolution to make a whole quantum leap forward...
In essence it was the magic in its pure, undiluted form. The will to live, even unconscious yet, clashing against the unyielding laws of nature... And making them yield.
When the age of sapient life came, the Star Seeds gained, at last, bodily avatars among the races evolving under their protection. Demigods, bare-handed heroes able to beat the monsters of Chaos who threatened their planets, they soon found their ability to travel across the galaxy faster than light, thus creating a loose but still united network of civilizations. Just a millennium later, a first step towards the inescapable failure was made: establishing the institution of Sailor Warriors that replaced the blind destiny with a conscious choice. The flow of fate had been changed forever, the demigod protectors weren't born naturally anymore but were instead chosen among the heroes deserving to accept the power of a planetary crystal into their soul. Serenity the Silver of Terra, one of the first and most powerful of them, foresaw the possible consequences of such liberties. But neither she, nor any other had it in themselves to step down. To stop doing what they were doing. For each step towards the light ended so much pain, pulled their charges out of such a pit of suffering, that no human being would bring themselves to make a single step backwards. So they continued pushing the Chaos further and further away from their home worlds, building its resistance to intolerable levels. To walk this way and not see where it would eventually lead, one had to be blind. To turn back, one had to not be a human.
In the end, the Chaos took its revenge rolling across the Galaxy in a tremendous wave of destruction. The kingdoms of light fell, Serenity's Silver Millennium sharing their fate. The Dark Age came. Thrown back into the stone age, the sapient races — the few that survived — began their long, painful climb back to the stars.
As time passed, many Star Seeds found new avatars or reincarnated their old ones. The age of Sailor Warriors was tentatively returning into the Galaxy, the avatars standing against the chaos-spawn again, waging the battle that cannot be won, that can just be fought. Because they were fighting against the very cosmos, with their teeth and nails taking from it the right to live for themselves and their loved ones.
The most striking, selfless and stupid was the heroic deed of Sailor Galaxia, the strongest of the Sailor Senshi. By attempting to seal the chaos of the entire galaxy inside herself, by trying to defeat that which cannot be defeated, she gave thousands of sapient races a chance to bloom unhindered, in peace and safety... Only to scythe them down by her own hand when the chaos finally won, subverting her from inside.
Only the perseverance of Sailor Sol and the all-encompassing kindness of Sailor Moon made it possible to stop the destruction on the last edge, preventing Galaxia from destroying Earth, the last living planet left in the galaxy. What they experienced that day left its traces - no defender of the Solar system was left unchanged.
Pluto hoped against reason that she didn't disturb the Cosmic Balance when she broke all taboos saving billions of lives. Time and again she felt the pain of a doubt. Should she have trusted the Princess and waited until she performed a miracle...? But no. Their future Queen wasn't ready yet. She didn't yet have that limitless power which could be glimpsed in neo-Serenity. The Usagi of today... She felt incomplete. Even in her highest form, achieved by a miracle, Eternal Sailor Moon was no match for Galaxia. Only the desperate efforts of Sol, who delayed and distracted the mighty adversary, allowed Moon to get close... And cleanse the tortured Senshi of the chaos possessing her.
Galaxia was long and irrevocably dead, having turned to dust with a grateful smile when Sailor Moon purified her. And yet, the doubt remained. Pluto had a feeling that everything should have turned differently. That they all should have died and Serenity should've won alone by ascending to her next, ultimate form. But the vague doubts are one thing and the billions of lives lost are on a completely different scale. There was no saving them except turning the time back. It wasn't fitting for Princess Serenity to be crowned a queen of a planet that was one big graveyard.
The Cosmic Balance... The cold and unforgiving fundamental force which keeps the universe from destroying itself, known by man as a set of conservation laws. Of energy, of entropy, of momentum... But alas, the conservation law Pluto unknowingly disturbed wasn't of such mundane things but of matters hopelessly beyond even her comprehension, belonging to such powerful yet intangible things as fate and destiny. And the destiny of the entire world was rapidly approaching the breaking point.
Right now, the future was smooth like a mirror. Not the slightest ripple, not a trace of outside influence.
And yet, her intuition practically screamed danger. Her thousands years of experience tried to tell her something. If she just could place what it was.
(シーンブレイク)
Unseen by Pluto, unknown for her, undetectable by means known to science nor magic, a titanic bulk of frozen time rested in the depths of the unexplored dimensions. The last monument of a civilization foolish enough to play with time, to treat it as a mere technology, as a cheap material for their dreams. That civilization was no more. It never existed, erased from the time stream by their own creation obediently executing an erroneous command. Yet the creation itself persisted, still following the last instructions it never received from nobody. Exist. Expand. Stabilize the world. Protect from meddling in the past. And the incredible machine, woven itself of threads of fate, kept striving against all odds with a mechanical stubbornness — unaware that its existence was impossible, not caring that its goal was unreachable. That simply wasn't in its program. And it survived, absorbing in the process all the time and space it could reach, assimilating a multitude of habitable worlds. It wasn't evil. It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't even self-aware. It was a very simple and robust machine following a very simple program.
A machine that many beings were able to hack into and use the power of to their advantage. Unless they were foolish enough to try to seize control over it all. Even the memory of those fools was then erased from the pages of time by a guardian paradox circuit. For the core of this machine had a truly absolute protection: everyone who would be able to hack it were erased before they were even born.
It's not surprising then that most of its "users", the beings who were able to control a fraction of the machine's energy, were either dumb or narrow-minded. Or both. For they were in fact mere pawns used by the machine on the way to its pre-programmed goals. Alas, that didn't prevent these creatures from being clever and wily.
One such being used a nasty trick to fish for its living prey outside, among the living universes, snatching it through the chinks of reality where multiverses with vastly different laws conflicted touching each other. And now this petty and foolish freak waited in gleeful anticipation, having set the hulk it didn't even comprehend on a collision course with one more external universe.
A universe that, unlike all the previous ones, had such an element as Sailor Senshi, mighty braces on the chaos-soaked fabric of cosmos. No one would be able to predict the result of such a collision.
(シーンブレイク)
Pluto adjusted the view port matrix one more time, looking at the multi-dimensional weave of the universe from yet another perspective. Still nothing, only the usual slow waves of background noises. Oh, if just things were so simple as most people think: look into the future, see the threat, take counter-measures.
In practice... In practice, the Universe is an unimaginably tangled weave made of the individual threads of fate of every thing alive. Like an infinite web, like a multi-dimensional field of moss, living, breathing, changing. Just look too closely, and it's so easy to lose yourself in the details, to stray away from the goal of your search. The individuals threads of fate are always in chaotic motion, somehow similar to the Brownian motion of the water molecules: these dash around frantically while the great river consisting of them flows slowly but surely.
There are exceptions in this weave, most notable of which is the shining silver thread of Princess Serenity, then Usagi, then neo-Queen Serenity. Thin just like the others, yet carrying an incredible power, like a million volt power line connecting the distant past with the foggy future. In fact, the entire web of fates of this planet is hanging on it.
Pluto switched the mode again, now looking at the time stream in its physical guise. This slightly rippling surface was like the surface of a river flowing from the past to the future. One could see the recently traversed rapids behind and the even, clear way ahead.
A deceptive, dangerously lulling picture. For the number of dimensions is almost infinite — not the worlds in the subtopian understanding, but dimensions: the lines in the world space perpendicular to every other one.·Nobody knows how the world changes along most of these if you stray from our zero coordinate. Because the visible world, and the world known to Pluto, of which it is just a small part, is in itself just an infinitely, infinitely, infinitely small part of the Whole.
Still, what was it that felt so wrong?
Pluto peered so intently into the time stream that she lost herself in the infinite details that would put any fractal to shame, overlooking the very thing she was searching for. There was a great wave rising right around her, but she missed it like a ship in the open sea doesn't notice a tsunami it passes over. All because of the immense size of the almost flat hill on the water.
The river of time of their living world met an unplanned obstacle. It being far below the surface yet, the time flowed around it resiliently, forming just the slightest eddies.
(シーンブレイク)
(External connection requested. Authenticating...
Success. User Ahs-Asthat-Taheet, access level 3.
Establishing connection...)
A slightest miscalculation cost Happousai dearly. Ukyou's battle spatula smacked him with a resounding clang. Thrown right at the feet of the oncoming horde of angry girls, he was...·
(Syncing time streams... Success, cutoff threshold 800 Petawatts.
Connection established, temporal corrections quota 150 Petawatts.
Current load 3 Watts.)
Deftly dodging Ukyou's battle spatula, Happousai leaped for the rooftops ditching the horde of angry girls: too much of a good thing would be good for nothing. Once he lost his pursuers, the old pervert started bounding towards the Tendous...·
Pluto frowned noticing the increasing disturbances in the time stream. Their origin remained unclear but such 'insignificant' fluctuations posed an immense risk. More disturbing was the fact that she never, in all the thousand years of her watch, had seen anything like this. Not knowing how to react she activated the soft counter-measures. Some mechanisms inside the Door came online after thousands years of inactivity, changing the second derivatives of the thin attributes of time, increasing its viscosity. While the principles behind this process were complex enough to blow the minds of mere mortals, it was in essence an equivalent to the sailors of the past centuries pouring oil into the raging sea to calm the waves. Alas, with a similarly negligible effect.
Once he lost his pursuers, the old pervert thought of returning to the Tendous, but the weather was nice, so he decided for a little walk. Down on the street he met a merchant selling gold fishes...·
(Warning, temporal interference!
Increasing uplink power to one Megawatt.)
...he met a merchant selling various esoteric incenses. The old man got interested: he had an ungrateful pupil to punish, after all. The man in fedora had a suitable incense in his stock, so Happousai headed home holding a...·
Pluto have grasped, at last, the nature and scale of the incoming disaster. Having her hair not turning gray only thanks to the Senshi protective magic, her eyes wide in horror, she looked forward like a captain of a ship going full speed toward a reef that was noticed just a moment ago... When it's absolutely too late to try to avoid collision.
No, the river of time still flowed quietly. But these abnormal side currents, the increasing number of eddies ahead... There, under the surface, was coming something immense.
And she still didn't have a slightest idea what it was.
Of course Pluto didn't just stay put. She frantically switched the Door from view port to view port, but in all planes, in all slices of the continuum, no matter which plane she chose as the observable "surface", the picture stayed the same.
Whatever was coming, it was coming from beyond the known world, along one of the multitude of unexplored perpendiculars.
Throwing caution to the wind, Pluto activated the Door's emergency protocol. Artificial threads snaked into the past and the future, latching onto the living fabric, breaking someone's fates... But she had no time for sentiments now. The shining silver thread sang, straining more and more. If it snapped, everything would be done for. Without it, the life on Earth would have no chance of survival. After all, the interstellar abyss is not lifeless. From the beginning of Time it's been inhabited by the hungry spawn of Primordial Chaos.
...so Happousai headed home holding the golden medallion. The old hag who sold it to him looked a bit suspicious, but... Well, the artifact was surely worth a little risk. Just to think of it: to be able to steal bras from distance, right from their owners! A dream of every man, that's sure. The icing on the cake was the fact that he bought it dirt cheap. After all, you need to be a ki master to use it... Happousai cackled. He was a ki master, all right.·
Returning home, the old pervert didn't even waste time sorting his haul. Pulling out the medallion...·
(Warning! Temporal interference increases!
Increasing uplink power to 80 Gigawatts.)
...the old pervert didn't even waste time sorting his haul. Pulling out the Beherit he found lying on the street...·
Pluto shuddered stumbling back from the Door. Ahead, a huge monolith tore through the mirror of time stream and loomed, smoking. A jagged, immovable iceberg of frozen time that moved but did not flow. The keeper of the time-space Door felt sick to the bone: this thing was so wrong, so unnatural, so impossible...
The time stream around the iceberg started freezing, the weave hardening, the threads of fate tearing, re-connecting, tearing again in a nerve-wracking cacophony. The shining silver thread emitted a blood-curdling whine catching on the jagged, unyielding edges. Any more, and it would snap. And that would be the end.
Failing to suppress a cry of terror, Pluto made a reckless decision. Sol and Saturn weren't the only ones who had an ultimate attack in their sleeve. Oh no, the Senshi of Beyond had her own repertoire of spells allowing her to put all her power into one suicidal, final·technique.
"DARK.."
Hurricane winds swirled around the raised staff howling like hordes of wraiths rushing to obey their patron, her mane of dark green hair flapping in the wind like a flame.
"ORB..."
A mighty orb of darkness started coalescing at the tip of the staff. The recoil from this spell was going to be terrible, much worse than that time over the Mugen academy. But only one thing mattered for Pluto now: the silver thread strained to its last limit chafing against the razor-sharp edges with a dying sing. How she would return from wherever the recoil would catapult her, she would think of later. If she survived.
"ENTOMB‼!"
Stepping through the Door, the Senshi of time superimposed her three-dimensional mortal shell onto the cosmic weave in such way that the required dimension, the tip of the iceberg became a forward vector for her. And in that last moment, releasing the blast that took all her power, she could at last see clearly what·was opposing her — and she knew despair.
The mighty orb of dark energy crashed into the tip of the iceberg. The foreign anomaly rang under the force of the blow... It gave way, submerging a bit...
...Pulling the golden egg out of the dusty chest where it had rested for at least a century, Happousai gazed at the...·
(Alarm! Connection destabilizes!
Deactivating the uplink power limiters!)
Failing to achieve the impossible, the dark orb dispersed in brilliant motes of black light. And the iceberg surged up, tearing the future asunder, looming like a titanic wall, freezing the time to the very horizon of the observed universe. Swatting away someone utterly insignificant in the process.
It wasn't just a chunk of frozen time, nor it was a construct of some evil genius. It was the edge of a whole multiverse frozen billion years deep and wide, having practically infinite mass and energy.
The past of the whole universe has been frozen solid, making the time travel fundamentally impossible. The future disappeared in a fog of uncertainty. Such thing as fate ceased to be. The prophecies lost their meaning. The fated people lost the power guiding them.
Only the shining silver thread persisted by some miracle, emerging from the ice and right away disappearing in the fog. It didn't hold the life of the human kin anymore. It wasn't necessary for the continued existence of the world anymore. And yet, it continued to shine stubbornly.
...Pulling the Beherit out of the dusty chest where it had rested for at least a century, Happousai gazed at the strange thing. The protrusions in the form of facial features randomly scattered across the surface of the egg-shaped pendant started moving until they formed a face. The Beherit opened its eyes and the abyss gazed back at the old pervert.·
(Connection stabilized, current load 182 Petawatts.
Warning: Level 3 user Ahs-Asthat-Taheet, you have exceeded your quota by 32 Petawatts. Your quota will be decreased to 100 Petawatts for the next 100 years.)
(シーンブレイク)
Happousai backed away from the suddenly activating artifact. The Beherit opened its mouth, emitting a scream surprisingly low and powerful for such a small thing. A moment later the artifact exploded with slime, swelling with a splorch into a mass of what looked like a slimy pile of giant intestines, pulsing, crawling and flowing along the walls and ceiling. An ugly face formed on a particularly thick one.
"Hello there," the eldritch abomination gurgled, smiling.
"W..WHAT...?!" Shocked, Happousai stumbled back. He, of course, expected a seductive demoness in a self-replenishing lingerie. "This... This is wrong!" He lost his balance and fell, overcome with the unimaginable stench making his eyes water. "Be... koff... Begone, hell-pawn!" he tried weakly to wave the stench away. Then, louder: "Noooo! What have you... koff What have you done, you defiler! My silky darlings..."
Alas, it was too late. The room was barely big enough to fit the thing in, it has already overturned everything around, matting most of the grandpa's collection with its slime.
"You... You will pay!" Happousai cried out, offended to the depth of his soul. "Happou Dai Karin!"
The demon smirked at the tiny firecracker.
He gathered his brains back together, regenerating the damage in an instant. Now he looked at Happousai differently. Not with contempt, but with interest. A very unhealthy interest. Then he drawled: "You're strong, that I admit. You could even survive." His smile made the old pervert feel ice crawling along his spine. "Well, my unwilling accomplice, let's have a little fun then..."
"NOOOO!" was the only objection Happousai had time to vocalize, glued to the floor by the slime under his feet suddenly turning semi-solid
"Well-well, what do we have here?" The demon smiled at him.
"Begone!" Happousai was thrashing helplessly in a semi-transparent bubble of twisted energies that were invading his mind. "No...!" He cried seeing the depths of the rotten soul going to absorb him. "Begone...! Don't... koff don't you dare, you... You, abomination!" For the first time real, honest tears wet the old pervert's wrinkled features. "Yes, I... I allowed myself a little too much...! Just innocent distractions of an old man...! But I... NO! You, abomination! Don't you dare touching..." He struggled mightily for the last time. "Come on, break my neck now, for I'll never concede, I will... fight... stop you..." He fell silent, his strength completely drained. "What... waiting for... kill...me..."
The demon just grinned in reply. This new toy was so amusing! It was thinking that "even evil has standards". Hilarious, simply hilarious.
(シーンブレイク)
When the other inhabitants of the house found their courage to peek into his room they, to their sheer luck, didn't find anybody — just a total wreckage covered with a nauseatingly stinky slime.
"I'm not letting her try to clean there," Nabiki said while tending to Kasumi, who had tried valiantly to do exactly that but just fainted. "Father, you'd better call a decontamination team."
(シーンブレイク)
From inside the time stream, from the corner of the Prime material plane called Earth, the wave of radical changes washing over the universe was practically unnoticeable. Like the passengers of a train are usually unaware about tracks switching far ahead or a stray godzilla crushing the return path behind, most people didn't feel anything unusual. Even the Senshi stayed blissfully unaware until the emergency all-call signal interrupted their daily activities.
Thanks for C&C to:
— Climhazard
— N. Kuta
— Orphus users (7 bugs so far)
