Chapter 36, Game Plan.
The inner Senshi plus Mamoru were all sitting in Rei's room, Ami closely watching over the raven haired priestess as she slept in her bed. The other four were sitting around the table in the middle of the room, Mamoru looking worriedly at the despondent Usagi, who was looking down at her shattered transformation broach. The group was silent for a few seconds, before Makoto cleared her throat uncomfortably
Usually, an announcement from Ami, Usagi or Luna would start the conversation, but the cats weren't there, and the two Senshi in question weren't likely to say anything. "Does this attack mean we've got another enemy?" The brown haired girl blurted, expressing her most major worry. The droids and their masters had taxed the Senshi to their limits, and the thing that had attacked earlier in the afternoon had eclipsed the droids in power.
Minako frowned worriedly. "I hope not. Any more like that one, and we'll have our hands full."
"You haven't seen any others that acted like that one before?" Mamoru asked, as he was only ever involved in battles where Usagi was in real danger.
Ami moved over from where she had finished examining Rei, and shook her head as she took a seat at the table. "I haven't been able to look over my readings yet, but there aren't any others that I can remember." She said.
"Is Rei all right?" Usagi asked, her voice almost too soft for the other Senshi to hear.
Ami nodded. "It seems that new Senshi was right, and the crystal that got stolen contained a great amount of her life energy. With it back, she should be awake soon."
Minako perked up. "Speaking of that new Senshi, it was pretty lucky that she showed up. If she hadn't, we'd be baked!" In spite of the mangled expression, the blonde's words were absolutely serious. "It's too bad she didn't stick around. Now we've got two mysterious new Senshi."
"Two?" The prince of earth asked, confused.
"Yeah. Another one showed up to help Ami during a left-over droid attack a little while ago." Makoto explained.
Usagi frowned. "It's a little strange that they just showed up as these new monsters started to attack." She muttered, causing the others to blink in surprise.
"Usako, are you all right?" Mamoru asked, turning the smaller blonde's face to look at him. "That's not usually your attitude towards newcomers."
Usagi shrugged. "I'm sorry." She said, briefly returning her look to her smashed broach. It was obvious to the others that its destruction, and the loss of her powers that came with it, was disturbing her greatly. "I'm feeling a little tired." She muttered. "I think I should head home."
The other three Senshi looked between each other, coming to a conclusion. Senshi business could wait, as long as things didn't get any worse. "We'll see you tomorrow, Usagi." Makoto said, smiling reassuringly.
The blonde rabbit girl nodded and smiled at her friends, before standing up and heading for the room's exit. Mamoru quickly followed, obviously going to walk the girl he loved home.
When the two had left the room, Ami looked at the other two conscious Senshi uncomfortably. "You know, she has a point." The blue haired girl said. "Remember how Ail and An showed up before the cardians started attacking?"
"You really think someone is impersonating Senshi to get close to us?" Minako asked, surprised.
"Well, Artemis said that Neptune looked slightly different." The taller brown haired girl offered.
Ami nodded. "I think I've actually got a lead on Neptune's civilian identity, and I should be seeing… her… this Friday." She replied, not sure that she wanted to drop the bombshell that one of the two new 'Senshi' could be a magical shape shifter.
"We can go with you when you meet her." Makoto offered.
"That may be a good idea." Ami agreed.
HR.
Setsuna sighed as she reviewed what had happened this afternoon in the time gates. She'd been putting her next task off for the past couple of days, and she'd known it, but these last events worried her.
Neptune and Uranus alone could have devastated the Youma earlier, and though it had still been taken out very quickly, Neptune hadn't been there to scan it for a talisman. She was relatively sure that the talismans weren't in the Inner Senshi, since they had all been visible in most of the timelines past pharaoh 90's attempted invasion, but there was still a risk that they'd missed one.
She cursed once again about the distortions around key events that kept her from just looking directly into who contained the other talismans, but as it was, she had to deal with what she had. Taking a calming breath, the Senshi of Pluto offered up a prayer to her planet that she didn't botch up a very sensitive meeting, clenched her staff in one hand, and teleported out of the time gate's main chamber.
HR.
Ranma was surprised. No, he was much more than that, he was shocked. Kasumi had just explained a plan worthy of Shampoo or Cologne, and worse, he was considering HELPING her in it. He walked through the front hall of the Infinity Academy building, not really paying attention to where he was going, but still his martial arts reflexes kept him from bumping into anyone.
He wanted to help Kasumi, especially given all of the things she'd done for him in the past, but this felt a bit like betraying the doc, who he owed almost as much. His mind had been chasing itself around in little circles about this for the past few minutes, and nothing had been resolved.
"Ranma?" Came a female voice, which he thought was rather familiar. He was jolted out of his thoughts, finding himself walking down an almost deserted stretch of the route from the school back to Setsuna's house. Looking around for the person who had spoken his name, he saw the green haired woman in the Senshi Fuku, walking casually next to him.
"Sailor Pluto?" He asked, surprised. He hadn't transformed since yesterday, and she had shown up much sooner than that the last few times.
"I need to talk with you." The green haired time Senshi said, giving him a look that reminded him far too much of Kasumi's earlier.
He sighed. "I wanted ta go make sure Haruka was okay, first." He mumbled, not stopping in his walk home.
"I need to talk to Haruka as well, and we will be teleporting to her in a moment." The time Senshi replied, calmly.
Ranma frowned, but eventually nodded. "Okay." He conceded, and Pluto raised the key shaped staff that she almost always carried. Ranma asked if he had to do anything to teleport, when they both vanished in a flash of light, leaving the street empty once more.
When the two reappeared, Ranma spent several seconds blinking the light out of his eyes. The teleportation had made him pretty dizzy, but fortunately he could handle the disorientation. Once his eyes were cleared of spots, he looked around to see that he and Sailor Pluto were standing on a rooftop.
"I thought we were going to see Haruka?" He asked, confused. Pluto just gave him an annoying smile, and gestured. As he followed her hand motion, he saw Sailor Uranus bound over the edge of the roof, and stiffen in shock.
Ranma was about to dash forward to catch the stumbling Senshi, but she managed to recover herself in time and landed gracefully on the roof. "Ranma? What are you doing here?" She asked.
He shrugged, pointing over at Sailor Pluto, then looked over the blonde quickly. "You okay? Why'd ya transform? Is something wrong?" He asked, in rapid fire.
Uranus smirked. "It sounds like you're worried about me." She said, before relenting. "There was a demon attack at a local shrine. I stopped it with the help of some of the other Senshi." At Ranma's sigh of relief, she couldn't help but smile slightly.
The relieved moment was broken a second later, when the dark green haired Senshi cleared her throat. "Excuse me, but we have to go." She said, calmly.
Uranus looked at her, confused. She looked like a Senshi, but she wasn't one she'd ever heard of. She wasn't really an expert on the Senshi, though. "We're going somewhere?" She asked, raising her eyebrow slightly.
"Yeah." Ranma said, nodding. "Sailor Pluto," He briefly gestured at the taller Senshi, "Wants to talk to us about something."
Uranus considered objecting, but it appeared that Ranma trusted this Sailor Pluto, and maybe she could answer a few of her own questions about being a Senshi. "All right." She conceded, stepping forward towards the other two.
"You're ready?" Pluto asked, and waited for Uranus's nod before raising her staff again, causing the three to vanish.
HR.
Nodoka looked out the large windows in the living room of Setsuna Meiou's home, worried. Setsuna had vanished earlier in the day, citing school business, and both Ranma and Haruka had been out of school for almost an hour. 'I'm worrying too much.' She thought, but she'd already been kidnapped once while here, and Ranma and Haruka had been attacked in their sleep. Forcing her thoughts away from that particular train, the former Saotome walked back to the large chair at one corner of the room and sat down, reaching for her tea cup.
Just as she raised it to her lips, she heard the sound of a knock on the front door. She was so startled that she almost sloshed the tea over the edge of the cup, but quickly regained her composure and set it back down on the table next to the chair before getting up and walking to the door.
She let out a quiet sigh of relief when she opened the door to see a somewhat familiar blonde haired woman. "Mrs. Tenoh?" She asked.
"Hello, Saotome-san." The other woman said, smiling and bowing. "My husband is off on a business trip to Europe, and I decided to visit Haruka-chan myself. Is she in?"
"I'm afraid she's not back from classes yet." Nodoka said, considering correcting the other woman about her last name, but deciding that it wasn't polite. "Would you like to have a cup of tea with me and wait for her and Ranma to get home?"
Mrs. Tenoh nodded and entered the house, carefully sliding off her shoes and replacing them with house slippers before following Nodoka into the living room.
Nodoka herself was just glad for the company, though she still wondered where on earth Ranma and Haruka were.
HR.
When Ranma, Uranus and Pluto appeared, they found themselves in a misty grey place, no walls or ceiling visible in any direction. The oldest of the three, of course, had seen this place many times in her long life, but for the other two it was a quite new experience.
It brought a slightly amused smile to Pluto's face when the untransformed Ranma took a defensive stance in front of Uranus, scanning quickly for threats. "Where are we?" He asked, throwing a measuring look her way. Perhaps, she reflected, she should have warned them about where they were going.
"This is the time gate, my domain." She explained. "I brought you here because it would allow me to talk without interruption, and to show you some of the things you need to see.
"Time gate?" Uranus asked, taking a quick look around. "I don't see any gates around here."
Pluto nodded, before gesturing with her staff again, causing the mist in front of the three to clear and reveal the stone structure of the time gate. It was a massive, oval shaped device, glowing with several points of silver and gold light around the edges. It also had small glowing runes etched into its surface, and a portal, about three meters high, in the center. "This is the time gate." She said, gesturing to the massive device.
"Oh." The Senshi of wind said, lamely.
"So, erm, what did ya wanna talk to us about, Pluto?" Ranma asked, being far more used to seeing truly odd things burst from nowhere than Uranus was.
Pluto frowned, and began marshalling her thoughts as Ranma and Uranus threw questioning looks between themselves. Finally, she started speaking. "A while ago, a monster attacked Kasumi Tendo." She started. "This was the beginning of an attempted invasion of this planet by an extra-solar threat." Both of the others didn't seem to be saying anything, so the Senshi of time continued. "This threat is looking for three items called Talismans, kept in the hearts of human victims."
"So that's why they're taking those energy crystal things?" Ranma asked.
Pluto nodded. "They're called heart crystals, and if they find the right ones they can obtain the talismans, which will allow them to destroy this world."
Uranus paled. She'd wanted explanations, yes, but it felt like she was being thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim. "So… we've got to stop them, right?" She asked, knowing how this sort of thing had usually worked in the action shows she'd watched as a kid.
Pluto looked uncomfortable. "That's… not exactly it." She said, slowly. "There's a prophesy, that there is a Messiah of light, and a Messiah of darkness. By the end of the conflict, one or the other must possess the grail."
"Wait, grail?" Ranma asked, the explanation surpassing his understanding by a fair bit at this point.
"Yes, if you re-unite all three talismans, the grail is formed." Pluto explained. "Basically, this means that we not only have to stop the enemy from getting the talismans, but we have to get them ourselves."
"Wait, these heart crystals are needed to keep people alive. What happens if one has a talisman in it?" Uranus asked, narrowing her eyes.
Pluto flinched, not wanting to say what she had to next. She knew that, without the thousands of years of past life memories, the two Senshi before her would likely balk at what she was about to say. "The human hosts will likely die." She said, quietly.
Ranma and Haruka both noticeably paled. "Ya mean we've gotta kill three people ta get these things?" Ranma asked, suddenly feeling a lot less trusting of Pluto than he had before.
"No, not three." Pluto said. "I have one of the talismans already."
"You mean you…" Uranus asked, horrified.
"No, I didn't." Pluto snapped, then sighed and began explaining. "During our past lives, the outer guard was given the talismans for safe keeping. Yours were sent into the future, sealed within human hearts and hidden so that dark forces couldn't find them." She shrugged, and reached up to the top of her staff, removing a small red orb, slightly darker in color than her eyes, from its end. "This is the third talisman, the garnet orb."
"Can't we just… I dunno, find out who's carrying these things and protect 'em so the bad guys can't get the talismans?" Ranma asked, really not liking the alternative.
Pluto shook her head sadly, and stepped forward. Laying her hand along the stone of the time gates, she concentrated. She couldn't control it well enough to show specific events, but the destruction of the planet was a pretty large probability line in the near future. The other two outer Senshi watched uneasily as the gate began to glow softly, and the central gap began to flicker.
Within seconds, the gap showed a vision that was all too familiar to Ranma, but that Haruka had never seen.
The blonde actually found herself drawing back to Ranma for reassurance as she saw the blasted and destroyed landscape of Tokyo, a harsh red sun glaring down upon the wreckage of a world. "This is what happens if we don't find the talismans and the Messiah of Light." Pluto said, certain for once of something.
Haruka was frightened by the sight, but she still wasn't sure of what Pluto proposed. She didn't like the idea of killing innocent people just because they happened to have what they needed. She looked up to Ranma's face, expecting to see the same uncertainty there, and did for a moment. Then, to her surprise, his face hardened.
"I see." The martial artist said, softly. "How do we find these talismans?"
Uranus looked at Ranma as if he'd grown a second head, and even Pluto's calm face broke into a surprised look for a second. Given how he'd reacted to almost killing Akira Kuonji, she'd expected his response to be much different. "You only have to use your Chi reading ability to check the heart crystals for readings similar to my garnet orb." She said, holding the small red object towards them.
Ranma nodded, concentrating on the ball for a moment. To his relief, neither of the two heart crystals he'd seen so far had anything like the orb in them.
"You can't be seriously considering this." Uranus said, finally recovering from her surprise, and finding anger their instead.
Ranma looked away from the blonde's indignant glare for a moment, before muttering something. "What was that?" She asked, walking up next to him.
"I've… seen that future before." He muttered. "Yeah, I don't like the idea 'o killin innocent people, and I'm gunna do my best ta try 'n find some other way ta solve the problem." He stopped talking for a moment, and then his eyes shot up to meet hers in a challenging look. "…but I ain't gunna let everyone on earth die just 'cuz we refused ta do what we had to."
Haruka stepped back, a little bit intimidated by the look in Ranma's eyes, but eventually started considering. "Is there any other way to do this?" She demanded, turning to Pluto. "If you can see the world getting destroyed, can't you see how it happens and let us stop it some other way?"
Pluto looked at the blonde Senshi sadly, and shook her head. "My control over the gate isn't good enough to do that… I'm sorry." She said, looking away, not able to continue meeting either of their looks. The fact that she didn't have full control over the gates had always bothered her, and now, when it was the most important, she felt deep shame for her lack of ability. She just had to hope that her main line candidates had had some method to their madness when they'd sent Neptune and Uranus out to check heart crystals.
Uranus nodded reluctantly, though it was obvious to the time Senshi that she didn't like what she was agreeing to. "I'll help." She said, finally.
Pluto sighed in relief, before struggling to hide her emotions again. "Thank you, both of you." She finally said, before concentrating on her subspace pocket for a moment. Almost instantly, two small black devices appeared in her hand. "Take these."
Uranus looked at the small black device incredulously as she took it from Pluto, while Ranma merely flipped his around in his hand. "A cell phone?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
Pluto nodded. "Slightly less odd looking than the inner Senshi's communicators. It will let me keep in touch with you and inform you of any attacks the enemy launches."
"Right…" Uranus said, uncertainly, before trying to find a place to put the phone. Unfortunately, her Senshi Uniform didn't really have pockets, and she was about to give up and just keep holding it when the phone disappeared. She jumped slightly, startled, but something in the back of her mind told her that she would be able to find it in her pocket when she transformed back to civilian form.
"Thanks, Pluto." Ranma said, sticking his communicator into one of the pockets in his pants. " Just… keep tryin ta find alternatives to the heart crystal thing, okay?"
Pluto nodded. "I will." She said, definitely, before teleporting the two other Senshi out of the gate chamber and to a secluded place.
With a very long sigh, the Senshi of Pluto let her shoulders slump. "That could have gone worse." She muttered, quietly, looking out across the gate chamber.
HR.
"Why is it always water?" Ranma asked, as Haruka, who had changed back from Uranus as soon as they'd arrived, struggled to suppress laughter. The two had exited Pluto's teleportation in a small dead end alley, and almost instantly Ranma had been hit by someone dumping their dirty wash water out of a fifth story apartment.
"Hmm, I guess I'm just lucky." The blonde quipped, the somber mood the conversation with Pluto had evoked in her seeming to have dispersed for the time being.
Ranma grimaced down at herself and her soaked clothes, though the silks would dry out within a short time. "It happened twice today." She grumbled.
"Aw, come on. It's not that bad." Haruka said, resting a hand on Ranma's shoulder. "We could go and get something to eat, if you want." Ranma was going to decline, but her stomach growled loudly, causing her to look sheepishly at the blonde. Haruka just laughed. "I'm paying, come on."
As Haruka offered an arm, Ranma looped her own arm through it, and let her chose the restaurant. "I'm the guy next time, got it?"
"Oh yeah, sure." Haruka said, obliviously, quite enjoying the feeling of Ranma on her arm.
HR.
"I can't believe you did that." Haruka muttered, as she and Ranma walked down the street towards Setsuna's house.
The redhead shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"
"You flirted with him to get a free dessert." The blonde sputtered, throwing up her arms.
"And he was dumb enough to do it when I had an obvious date, right?" Ranma countered, evenly.
Haruka just blinked rapidly. "Are you sure you're actually a guy?" She asked, deadpan.
Ranma just rolled her eyes, but Haruka reached over, wrapping her arm around the shorter girl's shoulder. "We're almost home." She said.
Ranma just nodded as the two turned onto the path leading to the house. Much to both of their surprise, as they walked up the path they saw the front door opening, letting out Haruka's mother.
The older woman looked at the scene, her daughter with her arm wrapped tightly around the upper torso of a short red haired girl, and began to frown deeply. Marching forward quickly as Nodoka exited behind her, rather puzzled, she walked up to Haruka angrily.
"Hi, Mom." Haruka said, smiling at her.
"'Hi Mom?'" Her mother replied, glaring at the younger blonde, who backed up a bit and let Ranma go. "What are you doing with this… girl… when you are engaged, young lady?" She demanded.
At that comment, Ranma started giggling softly as Haruka sputtered.
END.
Notes: I tried to find an image of the time gates. I failed. My prereader tried as well, and failed, but he actually seemed to have a clue. He seems to think the gate looks like the guardian of forever from Star Trek TOS, so that's what it looks like in this fic.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed. Please R&R.