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 11
Dead Zone.
(シーンブレイク)
Two girls were striding across rocky hills devoid of life. There was not a single blade of grass. Small backpacks of some twenty killograms were feeling strangely heavy. Akane was walking in front, full of unbending optimism despite all the risks of their chosen path. She was dressed in baggy camou pants and an unzipped shirt of the same coloration with a gray-green sweatshirt underneath. There were heavy ankle boots with ridgy soles on her feet. Ranma was dragging behind her, gloomy and full of apprehension. She was dressed in her trademark red and black Chinese silks complete with kung-fu slippers fit for her female form.
"This just sucks," Ranma kept grumbling, huddled up from either displeasure or the chilly winds that were whiffling across rocks. "This place is alright but what would we do if we meet a serious river in the next world? How do we get you across?"
"Would you stop droning?" Akane snapped, the mention of her greatest weakness got under her skin. "What would we do if we meet a herd of cats? Should we have taken a dog with us...? Stop pestering me, I got enough headache with this thing." She shook the medallion in annoyance.
"I'm sorry," replied Ranma. Judging by her tone she wasn't sorry at all. "It just, you know, grates. We are barely off the start and here I feel worn out." She snorted. "But you're right. Enough whining, no matter how much this world gets to you..." She fell silent, lost in thought. For some time the silence was broken only by pebbles crunching under their feet and the wind whistling. Then Ranma slapped her forehead and continued in a careless tone: "Well, I'm whining because I got stuck. But in all honesty I got off easy. Shampoo got hit much harder."
"What did you say?" Akane stopped, turning around to face her.
"She got locked as a cat, such a stupid coincidence."
"Such a disaster!" Akane said with sincere compassion. "I'd hoped that at least that pest would be spared."
"I too," agreed Ranma. "Well, pops doesn't count, he just doesn't care. But not blind idiot nor the clingy cat deserve this. But no luck. It was painful to even look at her. Ears drooped, eyes dull, haven't even jumped me... Well, I didn't have time to say my condolences. Mousse went ape-shit as soon as he recognized me. He just blew his top. Well, I can sympathize, he had to blame someone to relieve the stress and stuff. And here I walk in, conveniently... In short, I tied him with his own chains and handed him to the old ghoul. But it was such a fuss..."
"All right," Akane turned forward to keep striding with the same energy. "The sooner we get Sailor Moon back, the sooner everything will be back to normal. I hope at least P-chan was in his human form when it happened."
Ranma grumbled something unintelligible in agreement as she thoughts back to the time when the Great and Terrible Revelation went off not with an all-consuming bang but with a whimper. Akane haven't even changed her disposition towards Ryouga, although she took a habit of sarcastically calling him "P-chan" regardless of form. This always made the oaf to become flustered and make himself scarce.
(シーンブレイク)
(before they ventured forth)
"You won't be able to carry it," Akane said doubtfully.
"Well, what could we do?" Ranma tied her backpack shut. "It's against everything I know to do serious hiking without enough supplies." She critically weighed the backpack on one finger. "We are cutting into the bare minimum as it is. If we just knew what to expect in the worlds after that one..." She put the backpack on.
"We went over this already," grumbled Akane. "Don't push Ami."
"I've tried many approaches," the girl genius replied with guilt in her voice. "But so far this limitation looks to be a fundamental law not unlike the relativity principles. If you sacrifice seventy percent of your quota—"
"No means no," Akane cut in sharply. "His quota is our contingency reserve. We don't know where we would need it!"
"I don't object to that," Ranma agreed in an appeasing tone as she went towards the arch. "Ahs-seven Tkhachschas Eet-Suht, open the portal in this aperture to, erm, where it led before."
"Warning," the mechanical voice said. "Erm doesn't parse to valid coordinates. Attention, opening the portal using previous coordinates."
"Well," Ranma said as she made a tentative step through the portal. She immediately grunted bending down under the weight of her backpack. She didn't give up, even ran a circle of couple hundred meters on unsteady feet. Then she returned, panting, and swore quietly as she threw the backpack off.
"I've told you," Akane summed up gloomly. "Let's unload more."
"This sucks," grumbled Ranma throwing things out of the backpack. Things their very lives could be depending upon. "It was barely forty kilograms!"
(シーンブレイク)
So she learned, up close and personal, the meaning of "zero ki factor". This unnatural world was rejecting the spiritual force as it rejected the force of magic. Both girls were feeling an unpleasant weight, like a ponderous stone slab hanging centimetres above one's head. It was oppressive by its very presence. Any attempts to use ki, frequent because they were reflectory, butted against this invisible, otherwise almost imperceptible barrier. All they had left was their muscle power. This turned them into mere mortals, albeit highly trained ones. They've been able to take only barest minimum of supplies, some twenty kilograms each. They left most of the necessary supplies behind and were now relying on blind luck to a degree.
They had far to go. There was nothing to look at among these monotonously-lifeless rocky hills. There was nothing to distract them from various unwanted thoughts creeping in on them unobtrusively like nuzzling cats. If ki suppressing in the next world turns out to be as draconian as here, how far would they be able to keep going? How long would they be able to hold on? No one of them could tell for sure. Ami just didn't have enough data and time. What for Ranma herself... She didn't even have to concentrate to feel this world pressing on her, unobtrusively but persistently, trying to turn her into dead matter. Her spirit was resisting successfully, but its strength was finite while the patient, strangling presence was eternal. Their voyage was akin to a dive: if you could hold your breath long enough you'll be fine. If you couldn't, there will be more fish food... Well, there were no fishes here, not anymore. Every living thing in this graveyard world had died long ago. It was even a bit hard to breathe. Ami had reassured them that the atmosphere remained breathable despite declining oxygen levels, there were no plants to replenish it.
What was most vexing, she couldn't tell for how long she'd be able to hold on. Like someone diving for the first time in their life, she could only tell that her remaining time was diminishing. But would it suffice to reach the bottom and return? Would you surface barely out of breath — or fade into darkness, writhing from pain in your lungs?
In short, there were lots of reasons to be optimistic. Because the ki suppression turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg.
(シーンブレイク)
(before they ventured forth)
"Radioactivity?" Akane shouted suddenly, attracting Ranma's attention to herself and Ami.
"I'm afraid so," the girl genius replied, completely immersed in the tiny medallion screen. "And its levels are quite high. The Chernobyl zone is much safer, for comparison."
"Err, What's that Chenoby... howzyacallit?" Ranma asked trying to not look particularly interested. Better make a fool of yourself than be sorry later, this particular lesson she had learned.
"You are so ignorant it hurts!" Akane berated her indignantly. "Chernu... In short, it's a nuclear power plant that blew up in... nineteen ninety one? Or was it... er..." She fell silent, embarrassed. Ranma smirked obnoxiously.
"It was the worst nuclear disaster our world knows of today," Ami poitely interrupted them. "Chernobyl is a Russian nuclear power plant that exploded in nineteen eighty six. Luckily, there were no more disasters comparable in scale. The consequences were terrible: a huge area has been irradiated, people living there either evacuated or died from radiation sickness in the years to follow. The land around the plant became unsuitable for human habitation for hundreds of years to come. Living organism are often subject to horrible mutations there... Well, you know, six-legged rabbits, pines with foot-long needles... The favorite material of tabloids." She was silent for a while, then added: "I hope our domestic nuclear plants are built with better safety measures."
"And that zone is safe compared to this place?!" Ranma didn't like the news.
"In your place I wouldn't worry about the radiation," said Ami. "Its distribution is highly uneven, you'll be able to avoid dangerous areas using the map it does have in there." She pointed at the medallion. "No, what worries me is the concept of 'temporal noise' described here. I never met anything even remotely similar, not in the modern science nor in the records of Silver Mmillennium."
"Something worse than radioactivity?" Ranma asked with disbelief while dark apprehension slithered from the depths of her mind like a nuzzling viper.
"...Yes," Ami replied slowly, engrossed in reading. "This article says it disrupts the DNA replication mechanism leading to a sharp decline in the cell division process. Even a small exposure results in multicellular organisms almost completely losing their regenerative abilities."
"Umm, care to dumb it down for us less educated people?" hinted Ranma. "What did all of that mean? Our wounds would stop healing or what?"
"Much worse," Ami replied absently, her eyes focused on the screen. "The overall effect is analogous to premature aging akin to one caused by some genetic diseases, but even sharper." She lifted her eyes looking directly at Ranma. "Do you know that our bodies are subject to constant degradation? Only our regenerative mechanisms allow us to live decades instead of months by constantly replacing worn-out cells."
"Months?" Ranma swallowed.
"That's right," Ami replied firmly. "Pass through a temporal noise zone, and your body would grow old and decrepit in only a few months.
Ranma petrified as she imagined herself in Cologne's hide. Her hair stood upright, including the pigtail.
"By the way, that is the main reason we need regular sleep," Ami finished absently as she turned back to the medallion, thus missing the Ranma-shaped stone statue behind her back. "The regeneration works only when we sleep... Or when we are in our Senshi forms."
Ranma shattered into a pile of rocks and sand.
(シーンブレイク)
Their path not only led across deceptively-flat rocky hills but was also meandered ungodly because of temporal noise zones peppering the land. There were also spots of extreme radioactivity, albeit much rarer.
Ranma was walking silently after Akane who at times cast glances at the tiny medallion screen correcting their course. The medallion was pinging merrily as it counted radiation dose. Even the relatively 'clean' places had levels fifteen times higher any sane sanitary limits.
But the radioactivity was a pure triviality compared to...
(シーンブレイク)
(before they ventured forth)
"Ka-who?" Ranma repeated, dumbfounded.
"Khas-eeschaeets," explained Ami. "Large-scale inorganic life-forms who produce nuclear explosions during their mating season. Unfortunately, their mating season is currently at its peak, as you could see for yourselves a minute ago."
"What sort of beasts are they that they make nuclear explosions when they... umm... do this and that?" Ranma was taken aback.
"There's very little about them here," Ami replied in an apologizing voice. "They are endemic to worlds with zero ki factor. As human survival in such worlds is impossible for any significant duration, there's just no one to study them. At least I think so." She concentrated on the screen. "Let's see. Approximately a kilometer in diameter, feed by digging up mountains and absorbing various minerals. While feeding, they resemble a crater filled with oil... So are they liquid then...? While moving they form a vortex consisting of their own matter mixed with absorbed rock material. Hmmm... A typical vortex has a diameter of one to three kilometers, height two to five. Their movement has an intense landscape-forming effect. The best repellent is... a nuclear device ranging from one to ten kilotons. A direct hit makes them retreat or change their course... And the last piece of information, although this one is marked as unconfirmed: they are radioactive." Ami lifted her eyes from the screen. "If that is true then approaching them, even as far as several kilometers, especially downwind, would be lethal. And beware of their tracks."
"Great," grumbled Ranma. "Such fellows could squash Godzilla and not even notice. Is it at least possible to run away from them?"
"A second." Ami browsed for a little while. "Their speed varies from twenty to forty kilometers per hour."
"Which means, unlikely," Ranma summed up even more grimly. "Without your ki, you can't run like that, not for long. All we could do is notice them from afar and move across their course.
(シーンブレイク)
"How do you think, did these hashu-yshaitu finish their, er, business?" Ranma asked rhetorically, just to keep conversation going.
Their problem was that the portal laid in the direction where yesterday the mysterious khas-eeschaeets have been flashing their nuclear bangs. Ami had reassured them that the unstudied monsters were more than a hundred kilometers away while the portal was much closer, but... Who could know where'd they crawl. Two times already the girls had to cross immense furrows of crushed rock plowed through terrain, with the radiation counter screeching like a butchered pig. One didn't have to be a genius to understand whose tracks these were.
"I hope they did," Akane reassured her husband. "And if not, you know what to do: drop to the ground your feet to the flash and pray vigorously..." The joke came out strained and unfunny. A long, rolling rumbling came from the horizon, as if mocking them. Both girls started.
"You know, I feel just naked without my ki," admitted Ranma. "As if the jackassery with our Senshi magic wasn't enough."
"You think I don't?" replied Akane. "It feels like turning half blind and deaf. I hadn't even noticed how I got used to my Senshi powers." She touched her henshin pen hanging on a thick cord under her sweatshirt, currently unresponsive and useless. "It'd do us good to visit here from time to time. Just to not forget how it is, to be a common mortal."
Ranma agreed wholeheartedly.
Then they ran into a dead end and were forced to backtrack, all the while berating the useless medallion. Granted, the tricky mechanism had a built-in map of deadly zones. But it was building it on the fly, scanning around with something akin to a radar. The range of this thing was disgustingly small, a kilometer or two at best, while these zones were indistinguishable by the naked eye, all the same repetitive rocky slopes. Thus the girls were moving like moles in a dark labyrinth, making a lot of unnecessary footwork. What should they do if they stumble on a khas-eeschaeet and have to flee... The very thought was making them ill.
Besides, the travelers have already managed to get into danger several times, thanks to Akane's idiotic mistakes. She would set a wrong scanning mode, or map scale, or just look at the screen sideways — this one she was still feeling ashamed of. Luckily she hadn't managed yet to find an option to turn off the voice warnings. When detecting a danger, the medallion would employ a shrill siren making the girls run back along their own tracks.
(シーンブレイク)
Nodoka, as always clad in her impeccable kimono, was sitting and drinking tea with perfect serenity — a manifestation of her name itself.(note 1) Across the table there sat a gloomy panda surrounded by a black cloud of depression.
A tablet rose slowly, held in a furry paw: "Oh the ungrateful son of mine..."
"Now-now, dear. Don't be so glum. I'm sure he'll find a way to unlock the curses. Both his and yours."
The panda livened a bit, raising an another tablet: "He didn't even offer to take his father with him!"
"Look at it this way: my manly son went on a journey together with his wife, alone. Taking his father along would be somewhat... awkward."
The panda flipped up a tablet, shocked: "But he's stuck as a girl!"
"Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't be an obstacle for my manly son," Nodoka parried serenely and sipped her tea.
She noted with satisfaction that pandas, it turns out, could·become green.
(シーンブレイク)
"Oh my Shampoo!" sob "How could he do this to you!-"
Bonk "Shut up, duck-dolt. I need to concentrate."
"Meow?"
"Yes, granddaughter. There's something very wrong with the world."
(シーンブレイク)
Five hours of walking at an exhausting pace resulted only in weariness. Ranma and Akane found, to their disgust, that they made much less than anticipated. Akane gained a permanently-angry grimace and unending eye twitch while Ranma got enriched with several lumps. Also, her ability to shut up in time improved by half a percent. She was accepting the beatings with a philosophical patience: after all, Akane couldn't just smash the medallion against a handy boulder, couldn't she? But her feelings towards it definitely needed some outlet!
As they descended from yet another rocky hill they came upon a strange object. It was the first time they met something that wasn't rock. There was some bunch of hard gray fibres sticking out of the ground, like a scruffy end of an immense rope some half a meter in diameter.
"What do you think it is?" Akane asked as she cautiously walked around the unknown object keeping a safe distance.
"A tree," Ranma replied like it was going without saying. She walked up to it and kicked at the gray fibres. These proved to be hard but brittle, partly shattering from her slight kick. "A former one." Ranma stopped kicking a the ragged remains and ran to catch up with Akane. "I wonder how many years have passed since everything had died here? Even a tree-stump dried up to pieces even though it couldn't rot."
"Thank you for inspiration," growled Akane. "This... thing is pressing like a huge rock upon my soul. It's surely nice to know, on top of that, that we are walking a graveyard."
"Come on, I haven't said anything wrong?" Ranma tried to defend herself.
"I don't know about you, but I hve been hoping there was never life to begin with." The short haired girl sighed. "Honestly, it's better to stay ignorant sometimes."
They came out onto a flat plain covered with large bumps of gravel. But the bumps posed no obstacle, being very flat and packed to concrete hardiness. The girls were walking briskly. Sometimes they met small sand banks reminding Akane of that desert. She was glad it was cold here, for a change. Their energetic pace served the girls as a good protection from the dry, piercing wind.
After meandering for only half an hour they crossed the plain. Akane fumbled over the keyboard to find, to her joy, a large zone practically free of temporal noise beginning nearby. She shared the good news with Ranma.
The redhead hmmphed sceptically making Akane fume.
They turned towards a hill rising over the flat plain. Its slope turned to be a mix of pit gravel and crushed rocks. They started climbing it, sometimes using their hands.
When they reached a couple hundred meters above the plain, Akane turned to look back. She felt a nasty chill crawling along her spine: from this height, it was clear the lumps of gravel on the plain they've left were forming a too-regular pattern. In places one could discern wider lines cutting through this pattern. She shuddered internally, feeling like she inadvertently walked over someone's grave.
"Yeah, right, that's a city," Ranma consented grimly, answering the silent question. "I don't know how many centuries passed for everything to crumble like that, but people definitely lived here... Well, that's very sad but I'm more concerned about the hill we're climbing right now. I don't like it. Everywhere else it's rock, but here it's pit gravel and crushed rock. Fresh, crumbling. Reminds me of the tracks of these... atomic ones. By the way, there's a question: we were dashing across these furrows without caution. Were there no temporal death zones?"
"To think of it, you are right." Akane even stopped from such a revelation. "The tracks were clean of temporal noise! It seems these creatures clean it away as they move. We need to check it if we come upon a track going in the right direction. We could walk it then!"
"What about the radioactivity?" Ranma was sceptical.
"It's only one or two rems per hour," Akane waved her concerns aside. "It's nothing." (note 2)
"How much is that?" Ranma didn't give up. "Is it much, or is it little?"
"Waitamoment, will you!" Akane growled as she started fighting the medallion controls which made her stumble on the rocky mess. "Oh, I see... Why did they have to spawn so many of these! Sieverts, grays... How could I make sense of it? Wait, I'll call up the calculator!" She continued hitting the keys in a frenzy. Then she sighed and slammed the medallion shut. "It's much. But we'd have to spend a day there to get radiation sickness. And a week or two to die. The ki suppression would kill us long before that... Let's move!"
"It's all right then," agreed Ranma. "Transforming will heal us us from radiation when we return. It's enough that it's not lethal. It's decided then— Whoopsie..." The last part was said in a hushed, frightened voice.
Akane rushed to catch up with the pigtailed girl, then froze in her tracks. There was a round, funnel-shaped crater stretching before them, several hundred meters across. Most of it was occupied by a still mirror of shiny black liquid. It was really looking like a lake of oil.
"Hashushaito," Ranma whispered weakly like the alien non-life form could hear her. Or could it? Both girls backed away carefully, trying not to disturb a single rock. They froze hid by the crater rim.
Akane started tapping the keys. She was frowning more and more. Then she returned to the rim, looking at the serene "lake" warily. She started tapping again.
"So there are no passes to the sides of it?" Ranma asked, already knowing where this was going.
"Exactly." Akane slammed the medallion shut. Exuding determination, she began climbing down into the crater, carefully but quickly. "Doesn'to matter, we'll sneak by quickly. It's probably sleeping so it won't notice us."
"What about the radioactivity?" Ranma asked as she caught up with her.
The medallion started emitting an especially shrill sound not heard before. Akane stopped. She frowned looking at the screen.
"Well... We will still live," she finally whispered as she went forward. But Ranma did not miss an uncertain pause in her words and her involuntarily quickening pace.
"Wait," the redhead whispered. "It's the dust, right? Let's cover our faces with wet rags then."
"A good idea." Akane stopped. "But we don't have any rags."
"What about gauze from the first aid kit?"
They wrapped each other hastily. Ranma performed her part perfectly, then had to fall behind and redo Akane's handicraft. She could not see nor breathe in that knot!
(シーンブレイク)
"Something is gnawing at you," Mars stated matter-of-factly as she walked up to Mercury who was pacing nervously back to and fro. She crossed her arms. "Don't pretend it's nothing, I have noticed you gnawing at your glove. Come on, spill it." She turned even grimier. "What is it this time?"
"I was too slow to tell them everything," the bluette admitted with a heavy sigh. Her eyes were laden with self-recrimination. "With so many thing to teach and learn I thought it more important to concentrate on the primary matters, to avoid overloading Akane-chan with details - she was barely holding at it was... In the end I failed to grasp the big picture."
"And that's all?" Mars asked disbelievingly. "There's nothing to feel guilty about. You have to simplify and omit at every turn, for us the deprived of genius to get it. Don't fret, they are hardy gals. They will figure it out on their own."
"Yes, but..." Mercury wasn't giving up. "That information turned out to be vital. I didn't think reading all the articles was necessary - but now, in hindsight—"
"What's so extra-important did you omit?" Now Mars was growing worried too.
"It concerns these non-organic life forms, khas-eeschaeets." Mercury began pacing to and fro without noticing it. "Or, more precisely, their sensitivity. All sources point out that they are able to feel human presence from a distance up to five kilometers. They inevitably wake up and start pursuing. It is unknown if such behavior is caused by aggression or curiosity, but its result is always naturally fatal."
"Well, I don't think they'd have a reason to approach these things," Mars said trying to calm her down. Without much conviction, though. "They should be easily spotted from afar, right?"
Ami just nodded silently. According to her calculations, the forty kph these things could make meant there was absolutely no chance of survival if Ranma and Akane got close to one. And with stationary khas-eeschaeets being essentially holes in the ground there was practically no chance of noticing them in the rough terrain until it was too late. So even if they had this info now, it would barely affect their chances for survival. And if one of the things was nesting near the transport node, there were no chances at all!
She should have shot down the very idea of making a shortcut through that place. She should have found this deadly detail sooner, should have convinced them!
Haste, that was their worst enemy. If she read that article to the end instead of showing Akane the ropes for the seventh time. If she was quick enough to warn Ranma who ran off not listening... There were solid excuses: having never worked a cellular phone, not to mention a computer, Akane looked like her head was going to explode from learning too much at once. And there was no time to teach Ranma, even less tech-savy a person, while she was ferrying supplies back and forth and preparing them. They couldn't keep the portal open. But excuses won't bring these two back to life if they get killed.
For the lack of a real task, Mercury was busy self-recriminating.
(シーンブレイク)
"Bugger!" Akane whispered a curse. She took to the left, coming close to the surface of the oily-black lake. "Why is there a death zone if they clean them up?"
The medallion scared them almost to the point of soiling their pants as it screeched like a fire alarm. Akane fumbled frantically missing the keys. Finally she made it shut up, but not without stumbling in the process. Several rocks rolled from under her feet to splash down into the black liquid. The girls froze.
The dead silence was stretching, undisturbed. There was no wind here.
"It seems, we got off lucky," Ranma finally whispered.
Several bubbles emerged from the black liquid with a deep, resounding gurgling sound. Swelling up to some half a meter, they popped in showers of viscous splatter. Both girls felt their hearts skip a bit.
There was silence again.
"Let's go," Akane whispered, her voice quivering slightly. "The sooner—"
The medallion shrieked like a police siren whose aching foot was stepped upon. Akane's eyes darted toward the screen, then widened, and she dashed along the shore abandoning all care. Rocks kept rolling from under her feet, disappearing with splashes in the black liquid.
"What got into you?" Ranma called running after her.
"Three hundred rems per hour!" Akane replied briskly as she tried to fiddle with the medallion on the run, her eyes tied to the screen. She stumbled, causing a landslide. Rocks splattered down into the lake disappearing with dull splashes. By some reason there were no waves. "Bugger!" She took to the right, up the slope towards a small saddle in the crater rim. "These bubbles probably released radiation!"
Ranma glanced back. There were dozens of bubbles swelling on the oily-black surface along the shore, denoting the path of their recent dash. Below the place where Akane caused landslide, the surface was rising in one huge bump! The redhead flew forward like she grew wings. Soon she outran her wife.
Both let breathes of relief as they crossed the saddle. But they didn't slow down.
"How do you think, did we wake it up?" Ranma asked glancing back.
"I hope we didn't," replied Akane. "And even if we did, that it wakes up as slowly as Nabiki-oneechan... Just as I told you! There it is, a clean way."
There was a huge furrow of gravel and crushed rock stretching ahead of them, plowing through hills and cliffs alike. It was stretching in almost the right direction, a bit wavy but generally going straight.
"Clean?" asked Ranma. She may have had a great endurance, but she'd definitely not enjoy running across a mess of sharp rocks in her thin-soled shoes. Especially without her usual almost-invincibility given by her ki.
"Well, it's only five rems per hour," Akane replied as she misunderstood the question. "But by running along this thing we'll reach the transport node in an hour!"
"Maybe we could run close to the edge?" Ranma suggested. "It's easier there."
But there were temporal noise zones near the edge, only the center turned out to be free of them.
They kept running along the center of this titanic furrow, counting sharp rocks with their feet as the medallion clicked merrily counting millirems. Their gauze masks were drying quickly in the dead, dry air forcing them to waste their priceless water. Even the burning sun was feeling lifeless.
When Ranma started thinking her feet would fall off anytime soon Akane slowed to a walk examining something on the tiny screen. "It's time to turn," she said briskly. "We're almost there, fourteen hundred meters more and we'll be at the transport node!"
A lone mountain was rising to the right of them. The not yet visible pyramid was probably on its flat top. To turn right they had to find a gap between death zones first, before they could leave the furrow. They started zigging and zagging again, stumbling blindly like lab rats in a labyrinth. Ten steps forward, nine back. All across a mountainside. Up and down. Their path resembled a meandering counter-clockwise spiral going around the lone mountain. Slowly but surely they were approaching the top.
"Can we just break through?" Ranma suggested finally. Just to break the silence: the horror at the thought of premature aging was still there.
"Don't say nonsense," Akane absently waved her away, scrutinizing the screen with such a concentration she was unable to recognize a rhetoric question. "Did you forget anyway? The adverse factor of temporal noise depends only on distance passed through it, time spent in it doesn't matter. It makes no difference if you 'break through' quickly or tiptoe through it, the result would be the same."
"I know that... Ah, forget I asked."
They continued to meander.
They were several hundred meters directly above the place where they started, having made a full circle around the mountain, when Ranma looked into the distance hoping to see the wall of crater containing the creepy 'lake'. She swore: "Aw, the damn asshole! Akane, look! It seems it woke up!"
"Don't distract me! Who woke up?"
"Hashushaitu, who else." Ranma pointed towards the horizon. From the height they reached, the long, slightly wavy trench stretching towards the crater was visible for most of its length, showing as loops and twists partly hidden by hills. The crater itself, however, wasn't visible, shrouded by an inky-black cloud that was swelling as they watched it. Lightning was flashing through the deep darkness. They could feel the ground under their feet vibrate a bit.
"Oh, please, no!" Akane exclaimed as her eyes widened in fright. "Come on, quickly!" She grabbed the medallion peering at its screen so intensely that her eyes started watering up.
"Look! We can go here!" Ranma leaned across her shoulder pointing with her finger at the screen and pestering her with useful advices.
Choosing the route, they ran like panicking lab rats in a burning labyrinth, jostling each other at the turns, stumbling the wrong way in haste and bickering. Akane was turning the medallion in her hands to match the map with their direction. She was fumbling, the chain was getting in the way, it was no easier to navigate using a rotated map. Every turn leading backwards was giving them a fine opportunity to behold the approaching monstrosity. The black cloud had formed a vortex reminiscent of a bottom half of an gigantic twister: wide at the bottom, then narrowing and gradually turning into a slowly undulating trunk encircled with madly rotating crags. Leaving no freedom for interpretation, the trunk kept stretching right towards the girls. With a deceptive slowness, the rotating arch traversed the ten kilometers separating them from the monster. Soon it was descending onto them, oppresive by its scale alone. They missed the moment when it turned into a looming black throat feeling like the sky itself was falling onto them in a whirl of crushed rock. Around them, rocks were crashing here and there having fallen out of the titan's body. Some the size of a bus.
"We got no other way, we have to take a shortcut!" Ranma shouted trying to overcome the rumbling so low it felt more as a vibration in their bones than a sound. "Or there'd be no one to grow old!"
Hounded, Akane tore her eyes from the screen where she was trying to tell left from right. Why was it so dark? She lifted her eyes and stared in mute horror at the black vortex descending onto them, swirling with swarms of broken crags.
"Watch out!" Ranma grabbed her, pushing desperately with her feet in a circle throw. Putting in all her strength, she managed to throw both of them some meager couple meters aside. Still, it was enough for a boulder to miss them. It pulverized rocks where Akane stood a moment ago and ricocheted away. Not wasting her time, Ranma jumped onto her feet grabbing Akane and making a strained dash towards the pyramid.
The exhausting weakness crushed them like a strike at one's solar plexus. The medallion started emitting a nasty shrill warble. Ranma stumbled dropping Akane and falling on top of her. The deadening absence of ki, which have been pressing little by little before, suddenly grew all-powerful, crushing and choking them, demanding that they turn into dead and inert matter right then and there!
Akane came to her senses. Jumping up onto all fours with the last remains of her strength, she started dragging Ranma back by her collar. A step, three more, and they were able to stand up, if shakily. In the rapidly thickening darkness, the girls stared at each other, their eyes full of hopelessness and sorrow. They did not need words to understand: the zone of temporal noise wasn't just dangerous, as they thought. Death was waiting for them there, immediate and unavoidable, after the first dozen steps. It wasn't risky to take a shortcut, it was not possible. The hurricane wind was flapping their clothing and hair, the ground was vibrating with such a force that their hands and feet touching it were itching and numbing. A hailstorm of boulders was falling from the sky hacking away at the rocky ground around them.
The medallion emitted a shrill signal heard even through the all-penetrating rumble. A radiation warning. The girls came to their senses and looked around. They felt a surge of hope: the vortex was slowing down! The lower the black doom loomed, the slower it was approaching the ground!
Ranma pushed Akane in the shoulder pointing at the medallion. The redhead herself stood watching for the rocks incoming from the darkness. It was almost impossible to notice flying boulders and whole crags: the roaring darkness became almost impenetrable by that moment. Miss one, or be too slow to dodge - and you'll stay forever on this mountaintop, in a thin layer. It was very disconcerting for Ranma to realize that a danger not usually lethal for her turned into a risk to become a wet smear.
Akane figured their way and they dashed to the right, against the wind. There it was, the final loop! The hurricane force wind was pushing them back, threatening to blow them off their feet. Stumbling and supporting each other, they overcame its push reaching a bend. They turned around a death zone outcrop to the left, desperately pushing with their feet to slow their movement and not let the wind suck them up and carry them into the roaring meat-grinder.
The pyramid emerged first as a constant cracking that stood out from the overall roar, rocks smashing against the unyielding walls of the edifice. Then it greeted them with a hail of small shards slashing at the girls painfully. Finally they stumbled onto a slanted wall praying that the entrance won't be on the opposite side. They were very lucky: a force field covering the entrance emerged a half dozen steps ahead, glowing dully. Pushing with the last of their strength, flat against the pyramid wall, they let the wind carry them to it. Barely managing to push through the resilient, opalescent membrane they fell to their knees and hands, breathing hoarsely in the silence of the mirror hall. There was only a quiet, menacing hum reaching through the force field and Ranma wondered how they managed to get through it if it was so powerful.
Not even taking time to catch her breath, Akane started tapping the keys with her shaking fingers.
Right, thought Ranma. We have to go. No one can tell how long this pyramid would hold. Forget the pyramid, it'll uproot the whole mountain any moment now! She turned back, crawling warily away from the entrance arch visible clearly thanks to the dull opalescence of the membrane. Like a liquid pearl or swirls of milk in coffee. Her wariness proved justified as something crashed against the field bending it in. Flashing for a brief moment with concentric rings, the ephemeral barrier straightened returning to the weak glow of opalescence. Ranma was surprised to notice that the floor wasn't vibrating at all. It was creepy: that thing outside was probably grinding the whole mountain into gravel, but here, inside, it was eerily calm. The silence was broken only by the quiet hum from the entrance and the sound of Akane tapping the keys.
She got no time to contemplate on this further as the hall was flooded with light and Akane shouted "Go!" as she tore the layers of blackened gauze off her face.
Ranma didn't need a second invitation.
(シーンブレイク)
Saturn materialized on an edge of a giant crater. There was atmosphere present - and, it seems, it was breathable! The girl's spirits lifted. The endless attempts to teleport back to earth wore at her until she was feeling numb. Did she make it at last? She started looking around eagerly. The dark rock under her feet was rising from a white shroud of snow in serrated ridges. A dull disc of the Sun was half-hidden by the horizon. Below, under the rocky slopes, a frozen plain of an ocean was stretching wide and far.
Definitely Earth. And the crater — she felt an unmistakable mystic 'aftertaste' in the air — was all that remained of the Dark Kingdom, an impressive reminder for the enemies not to mess with Sailor Moon. Pity that the spell of unnoticeability put by Beryl on this Arctic island still held, so the enemies had tendency to miss the hint.
Saturn sat down on a rock and sighed. She would not dare testing her fate by teleporting again. She'd prefer to walk and swim from here to Tokyo, however many thousand kilometers separated her from home.
(シーンブレイク)
April 30, 2012. Translated June 12, 2012. Last correction April 13, 2016.
Ding! Tropes unlocked:
Brought Down to Badass
Author's notes:
1
Nodoka (長閑 or のどか) means "Tranquil"
2
"Rem" - Roentgen equivalent man. Measures absorbed dose in rads with a correction according to various factors that affecting how harmful the absorbed radiation is for a living organism. Is equal to rad for gamma radiation. Akane is way too optimistic about this, as one Rem is a significant dose. 1000 is definitely lethal, while 200 will probably make you wish it was lethal. Sievert is a modern unit equal to 100 Rem.
Thanks for C&C to:
— Crystal
— Pusakuronu
— Orphus users (15 bugs so far)
