Chapter 15.
The humus line, and the nifty one, are blatantly stolen from BtVS, I couldn't help it, I swear!
Who ever can catch the referance to 'The Princess Bride' gets a cookie!
This is the last chapter! Well, apart from the epilogue. (Elemental, e-mail me! Claim your prize, I don't want to put it up without your go-ahead!) This isn't the last you'll see of me though! As well as the epilogue, there will also be the thank-yous, and the final edit, missing scenes et-al, so be sure to check back.
Please review this, this was one of the hardest things I've ever written, and I'd like to see how you thought it worked out. Also, make sure to tell me if you're interested in a sequel or not, there are still plenty of issues I could stretch out instead of making an all-inclusive epilogue, as well as any questions you feel I've left un-answered!
I love feedback, please, I would make my day! I rejoice over every single one!
Here we go....
*****
"Is everyone here?" Quatre asked, aqua eyes scanning the oval table in the conference room that had hastily been converted into their main planning space. He stood at the head of the table looking confident aside from the fact that his face was slightly paler than usual and he gripped Minako's hand tightly under the table, "I think we've got a plan."
That woke the room up, everyone, (apart from Dorothy, who was scraping the dirt out from under her nails with a thin stiletto knife) leaned forward in their seats, growing quiet with anticipation.
****
Hotaru:
The room went silent as we exchanged disbelieving glances, Quatre winced, waiting for the inevitable backlash.
"That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard." Wufei stated bluntly, amused at the shocked looks shot in his direction. I had to agree.
Dorothy looked up from the notebook she'd been doodling in. "We attack the youma with humus."
Wufei paused, pursed his lips, then nodded. "I stand corrected."
"Still," Trowa interjected, his face pale, but calm, "Let Trieze escape? Please tell us how you think that would help."
Quatre nodded to Mina, and she rose, pacing the length of the table, slowly, "Quatre and I have let him overhear some 'plans' of ours, if we let a few more things slip, then arrange for his escape, we can probably goad them into a full blown attack."
Silence. Like the rest of the group, I definitely did not like where this was going.
Duo raised his hand, slowly. "And this seems like a GOOD idea to you?" He replied, speaking very slowly, as if to make sure he'd heard her right.
"Well, yes." Mina said, blushing a little, "If we can get them all grouped together in one spot, we've got enough firepower between us to surround them and hold them off for at least an hour." She ran a nervous hand through her hair, "See, it's misdirection, Dorothy, Wufei, Trowa, Iria, the Magnuacs, and whoever we can recruit into helping, can hold them off here," she pointed to the long stretch of desert surrounding the mansion, "While Hotaru, Heero, Duo, Quatre and I go after the main building, whose location Trieze has so helpfully provided for us." Mina smirked. "Duo and Hotaru should be able to take out the whole compound if we can get them in range."
"Why?" Iria interjected, speaking for the first time that day, she still seemed profoundly shaken by the concept of magical destruction in it's entirety, "I understand wanting to draw out the defenses for a clear plan of attack, but why are we going to all this trouble to blow up a building."
Quatre grinned, "That's where Trieze was really useful, he let a few details slip that sound like there's someone with some serious magical mojo in the north tower of the compound, here," He tapped the makeshift map on a rough sketch of the compound in it's estimated size and position. Mina must have explained a lot of magical theory to him, because what he said next shocked the hell out of me, as well as clarifying a lot of things that were seemingly impossible. "It seems that this river theory Hotaru told us is true, from what we were able to wring out of Trieze, we figure she's got some sort of machine acting as a dam, or circuit-breaker if you will, for her. To handle that much power, she must have tied a lot of life energy into it and secured it into the physical plane, into something like a computer."
Duo's lips curled upwards in a sinister fashion, it was amazing how many expressions of Shi's he'd taken on since the merging. "So, no more compound, no more portal, no more wicked witch of the west?" They nodded. "Cool. I get to blow shit up. Always liked doing that."
I looked around the table. People were starting to nod and relax as they considered the plan. A heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach, for all my brave words to Mina, I was in no way ready and willing do battle again, let alone have the sole success of the mission teetering perilously on my shoulders. "No! This is all..." I objected, raising from my seat. "That's just SUICIDAL!" I exclaimed, maybe I was being cowardly, but at that point, I didn't really care. No one was going to die because I couldn't pull off an impossible task. And in no one, I was definitely including myself.
Mina stood again, to face me, drawing another breath probably to give me another meaningless inspirational speech that would distract me long enough to change the subject, but I cut her off sharply. I shook my head angrily. "Is this going to be another lame, 'are we mice or men' speech, because if going in blind makes me a man, I'm announcing right here that I'm most emphatically mouse." Mina's mouth snapped shut, looking more than a little hurt at my harsh words. Nonetheless, I was too far gone to stop now and I plowed on.
"For one, I have no idea how we did that in the first place, let alone doing it again, but I don't know if we'll be able to control that much power! I could incinerate all of Duo, myself, and whoever's guarding us, and you couldn't do anything about it! Just think of the destruction that would be caused if the senshi power actually FUELED the machine instead of destroying it! I know I don't want to be responsible for helping OZ take over the world!"
"That's a chance we're going to have to take. It's the only way." Quatre replied, his calm, quiet voice cutting through my hysteria.
"But..." I objected, my voice was cracking and tears were starting to spill out of the corners of my eyes. I felt a hand on mine under the table, almost reassuring in it's bone-crushing grip. I looked over at Heero. He shook his head.
"I don't want anyone to die." I finished in a weak whisper. Great, no I'd just embarrassed myself, acted like a big dumb coward, and snapped at my best friend. I looked up, and Mina met my gaze, she smiled slightly, and thin veil over the terror that lurked in her bright eyes. I scanned the room, in the past months these people had become as dear to me as the slaughtered family I'd left behind. "Sorry." I apologized for my childish outburst. "I'll do it." I paused. "This really sucks."
Duo patted my shoulder, awkwardly. "Hey, if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off."
*****
"If I die, I think I'd like to be scattered in the wind. Always free, y'know." Mina murmured from where she lay, in the remains of the orchard, curled in Quatre's lap.
"Don't say things like that, love." Quatre frowned.
Mina shook her head. "No. If I die and you make it, I'd like to be scattered in the wind. Simple as that Quat," She shifted so her head was cradled in the crook of his arm and she could meet his eyes. "Talking about it doesn't curse us or anything. We live, we breathe, we can die, today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, just as easily as eighty years from now, it will come." She sighed.
"Though the chances of dying tomorrow are much higher than I'd like them to be." He mused.
Mina scowled, "Hey, you're supposed to be promising me that no one will die! You're not very reassuring."
He smiled softly down at his distraught girlfriend. "Your speech was very pretty, and unfortunately, true. What I meant, love, is that I don't ever intend to live without you."
She gasped, and all anger melted from her face. Yeah, that was the right thing to say, thought Quatre. Still, the contented look on her face didn't last very long.
"Hotaru was right today, you know. How do we know this just won't make things worse?"
Quatre shook his head, "We don't, all we can do is hope." They lay there in desperate silence before Mina mumbled something he couldn't quite hear. "What was that?"
"Could... could you promise me anyway? That we won't die." She asked, her voice sounding very young as she blushed.
"Okay. I promise." Quatre whispered into her hair, trying to memorize it's exact shade, it's texture, it's smell, and the way it fell gracefully around her shoulders.
She turned a smiling face to him and tapped him gently on the nose. "Liar."
*****
Heero rubbed his eyes, this was it, he'd found a slight back door in his programming. Not a big one, mind you, or else he'd have fixed it long ago, but just wide enough to let a small stream of contentment and accomplishment through as he finished charging and shut down his laptop.
Hotaru slipped into the room silently behind him, resting a hand on his shoulder.
It stayed there for about point .002 seconds as Heero whirled around, backhanding her across the face, and whipping out his gun to press against her temple.
She reeled backward a few steps in shock and pain, holding her cheek. Partially blocked emotions or not, he still had that enviable cyborg strength. She glared up at him as his icy battle facade melted away. "Oh. It's you."
"Must you always greet me at gunpoint?" She gritted out, her more regal persona straightened her back and set her mouth in a firm line.
A little sheepishly, Heero put up his gun. "You shouldn't sneak up on me." He replied. It wasn't an apology, but she had the feeling it was as close to one as she was going to get.
Stupid girl, she cursed herself, always falling for the wrong, wrong, wrong guy.
He reached out a hand toward her, marveling that she didn't flinch. He ran his fingers lightly over her injured cheek. Injured because of him. A dark feeling washed over him. Was this... guilt? He didn't like it at all. He fought the urge to boot up and close the door to his emotions that had been left partially ajar due to his own meddling.
Maybe they'd be better off if he just re-programmed and lost his emotions again. All emotions did was cause pain. Look at Quatre and Mina, so desperately afraid of losing each other, even still in these early stages of their relationship, or Wufei and Meiran, he'd done reconnaissance on each of his fellow pilots and discovered the secret pain that drove a peaceful scholar to war. Was it worth it? No, probably not, but he had to try, at the very least. She deserved that much.
She saw the apology in his eyes, and the confusion, and wanted to forgive him. Attack was instinct for a soldier, it could have happened with any one of them, but she couldn't help the doubts springing up in her mind. She shrugged, and let the half-formed thought float away. Why worry about the future when they might not even live through the next day.
She turned her bright eyes on him, "So, we're going in tomorrow. Think we'll die?"
He relaxed, battle was something he knew how to talk about."Have there been any further developements in our plan?"
She snorted, "Right. Last I heard, we've hit rock-bottom, then started to dig."
He paused for a moment, considering her words, then shrugged. "According to all possible factors, as well as the gaping holes in this plan, I'd say, yes, we're going to die."
"Yeah, I thought so." One side of her mouth quirked up in a sly half-grin. She moved toward him, so close that he had to back up to keep her from running into him, stopping when he felt the wall at his back. What on earth was she doing? For that matter, why was his body burning like this?
She glanced up at him, hesitating for a split second before grabbing him behind the neck and pulling his mouth down to hers. She trailed her fingers through his hair, before snaking around his back to clutch at his tee-shirt and press her body in closer to his.
Heero, shocked, stood frozen for a minute before his body took over for his poor, addled mind. He began to move his mouth on hers, and she opened her mouth.
Finally, breathing heavily, she broke away, and a contented smile spread across her face. "Wow."
"Guh?" He replied, eyes glazed and hair mussed. He reached for her shoulders again, he didn't know what the hell he was doing, but he knew he wanted it to continue. Instead, she chuckled at the expression on his face.
"Hell, if we're gonna die tomorrow, I wanted to do that, and you weren't going to start it." She looked deeply into his prussian blue eyes, and kicked him in the shin. "But if you ever hit me again, accidental or no, I'm never doing that again, capice?"
She winked and strode purposefully out of the room before he could respond. He touched his burning lips in disbelief, his mind made up.
Oh yeah. She was definitely worth it.
*****
"He runs like a girl."
"Iria!" Dorothy exclaimed, pseudo-scandalized.
"He does." She replied, around a mouthful of popcorn. Dorothy and Duo grinned at her in appreciation. The good doctor loosened up a great deal after she seemed to have decided that none of this was really happening, and she may as well take a great deal of amusement in her personal neurosis. Also, those gin and tonics were probably helping as well.
Dorothy, Duo, Wufei, Trowa and Iria herself were seated in a rough semi-circle watching what Duo had dubbed 'the show'. They were in the surveillance room staring at the monitors as Trieze made a stealthy 'escape' from his cell. Dorothy shoveled a handful of popcorn into her mouth and passed the bag to Duo. Trowa shrugged, and rolled his eyes, while Wufei was slowly turning a brilliant shade of red in his effort not to snatch away the bag and scream, 'This is a mission you idiots, if this doesn't go exactly right, we're all dead tomorrow! Dead!' but he managed to refrain. He suspected his own nerves were getting to him, as well as the suspicious lack of two people at the 'party'. He hadn't expected either Quatre or Minako to show up, but where were Heero and Hotaru?
'I don't want her, I willingly gave up any chance I had,' he thought, 'I just don't want him to have her. He can't treat her right, and she'll just end up hurt.' he considered his thoughts for a minute, looking at the two empty chairs. 'Shit, too late.'
*****
Dorothy sat in the cockpit of Deathscythe, familiarizing herself with it's controls, when a faint voice called out to her from below. Seeing Hotaru standing quietly as the foot of the gundam, she hoped down to join her friend.
"Hey," Hotaru said, "I wanted to ask you something. Have you ever had a dream... no that doesn't make sense, have you ever thought you were someone else?-I mean- oh damn. Are you Sailor Uranus? Pluto was pretty vague about that." Hotaru finally gave up, her cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
Dorothy looked at her google-eyed for a moment, before starting to laugh. "I guess so, I would explain a bunch of things, weird memories, violent tendencies, and so forth. Were you two, er, were we close?"
"Yeah, you were like a father to me."
Dorothy raised an eyebrow.
"Long story. Yeah, we were close. You died watching my back. Well, mine and Michiru's"
The silence stretched over a few awkward moments.
"Enough about me. What's up? Got tired of Heero and the land of the horizontal mambo? Wham, bam, thank-you-ma'am?"
Hotaru choked, "Dorothy! You know that's not what I've been doing!"
"Do I?" She raised an eyebrow, and ducked a punch. "Touchy, touchy! All is not well in the land of looove?"
'Taru rolled her eyes, "More like the land of mixed signals. I swear that boy is.. Rrr! Just Grr!"
"Sounds good to me." Dorothy replied, her voice heavy with sarcasm. "Heero being a jerk?"
"No, just being himself, as usual."
*****
"Here it comes." Hotaru turned to Mina, who stood beside her on the patch of field they'd claim as their territory for the battle. A dark line of the horizon that was only beginning to materialize into individual suits.
"Whatever happens, I... well." Hotaru stopped, at a loss for words. Mina smiled softly and wrapped the younger girl in her arms.
"I love you too. Scared?"
She nodded, as the first suits landed on the far side of the massive field. "Terrified. Here we go..."
******
As Heavyarms and Nataku ripped through a pack of libras and leos, Mina spun a love-me chain around her head before entangling it around three approaching suits. Mina had almost laughed at the surge of surprise she'd felt through the weak link she held with Quatre the first time she'd used her power. She'd forgotten that she'd never used the dazzling chains and crescents incandescent yellow of light in his presence.
Her entire body felt light, there was so much power here! Even her weakest attacks were ripping through the metal mobile suit forest that stretched around the three solitary figures on the ground.
Mina, Hotaru, and Duo had been the only ones judged to be able to do more damage on the ground than in mobile suits. Dorothy hadn't been insulted, her magic was still buried, untrained, and she'd practically bounced in glee as Duo reluctantly handed over the controls of his beloved Deathscythe.
Duo, now there was an odd mix, after a few intensive training sessions with Hotaru, he'd managed to remember a few ancient attacks, but he seemed to prefer to make up his own, he was currently charging his gun with power and firing a hail of super-charged bullets, doing far more damage than he should have been able to. It was uncanny, almost as if he remembered his past life.
On the other hand, it was her past life that she'd though would hold her back in battle. She'd almost been hesitant to use her power before this, afraid of the memories she'd left behind, but holding Hotaru's hand and feeling a surge of support and love through her link, transforming had been surprisingly easy. She grinned, and let loose another attack, finally feeling like herself again, like she had in junior high, when she'd first discovered her powers.
"Power of love and the planet of Venus, punish these destroyers of peace!" She proclaimed striking a pose, just for the hell of it.
Duo looked at Mina, raising his eyebrow in one of those expressions he likes to pretend he doesn't have, "Um, Power of the 9mm semi-automatic, kill a lot of bad guys!"
Hotaru swung her scythe, unleashing great peals of destructive light with each swing. "Guys! Mina! Duo! Trowa say they can handle it from here, and Dorothy, Heero and Q, say they're ready to make their appearance! Let's go! Phase 2!" She yelled, both to her companions and into the headset she wore. She'd insisted on wearing the headset. Only Pluto knew, but she'd always wanted a headset just like Madonna's when she was a little girl. Letting off a few blasts to cover their retreat, they hurried south to their rendezvous point.
*****
The youma grinned to each other on their comm screens the so-called powerful senshi were running scared, en masse, the left flank of the attacking force broke off from the group, following them into a wooded area.
"Pursue on the ground!" Cartlon, the wing-commander bellowed. "They're trying for forest cover, they..." He trailed off as three gundams hurled themselves out of the sky directly into their path.
"Oh shit." Cartlon cursed. "Ambush!"
*****
Swooping down, Quatre's gundam grasped Mina gently in it's massive hands, as Wing did the same for Hotaru and Duo. The third Gundam touched down in a hard, showy three-point landing, and moved to unsheathe the weapon her back.
"Have fun! Don't scratch her paint!" Duo called as Wing followed Sandrock in launching himself back into the air. Deathscythe straightened holding her weapon straight in front of her. Duo twisted around to see why the youma had hesitated, confused.
"Hey, that's not..."
Dorothy's grin was audible through the external voice comm she'd switched on. "What? You were expecting a scythe?" She said as she flashed the altered energy weapon, now resembling a broadsword more than anything else.
"C'mon Doro, go for it!" Hotaru sent, after the encounter with Heero, she'd worked of the weapon, re-shaping it for Dorothy.
Dorothy flipped the sword in a practiced gesture, one she'd spent the night analyzing after Hotaru had shown it to her, so the point of the energy weapon now faced the ground. "Earth... shaking!" She screamed as she plunged the sword into the forest floor, the ground erupted under the other mobile suits disintegrated.
The last thing that was heard as they sped away was Duo's protesting yowl, "Dammit! My scythe! Dorotheeeeeee!"
******
Swooping low over the north tower where the alleged portal was, Heero and Quatre dropped their passengers a few feet above the roof, before peeling off to land and make their way up on foot. Mina and Duo both managed to roll fairly easily, but Hotaru, senshi coordination notwithstanding, had never been too great at keeping her feet. She bounced a few times and lay still, Duo rushed over to her, worried, but after a few seconds, she moaned and sat up, abrasions on her cheek and shoulders from the rough concrete healing rapidly. "Ow." She grimaced, getting shakily to her feet. "Next time, can someone remind me not to break my fall with my face?"
Mina rolled her eyes, "Ready?" They nodded, she returned it and executed a spinning kick to knock down the maintenance door that led down into the control room. "Here goes everything." She murmured as they started down the stairs.
****
Dorothy grinned as the metal and earth flew past her, using a deadly combination of magic and good, old-fashioned ass-whupping, she was in her element. While Trowa and Wufei flanked her silently, she was laughing and cracking wise as she tore through wave after wave of enemy mobile suits.
Privately, Trowa thought she had gone completely insane, if she hadn't been previously, but he couldn't argue with the results.
Skipping over to a suit downed from another of her earth-shaking magical attacks, (Trowa was quietly disturbed by this, he hadn't thought Gundams COULD skip, let alone do it while gleefully stomping on her enemies, and answering the age-old question of: What would happen if a youma got stepped on by a gundam? Frankly, Trowa thought, a little queasy, it went 'crunch' and left a big red splat.), she powered up her energy sword and leaned in close, "Earth is full. Go home." She said politely, slicing off the suit's legs at the knees.
*****
"This is it." Duo whispered as he came to a closed door, through it, they could hear a harsh female voice cursing, and the whirrs and clicks of a dozen interfaces set up in an alleged command center.
"Remember the plan guys!" Mina hissed, as Duo turned the doorknob, distract her long enough for me to plant the explosives, and for Heero and Duo to clear a path of escape for us on the way down, that's all! Duo! Don't piss her off!"
Duo paused, before pushing the door open. "Moi? Would I do that?" He replied, his eyes wide in a Bambi-like expression of utter innocence.
"Yes." Mina and Hotaru responded in unison as Duo slid the door open as silently as he could. They had crept into the room for a good five paces before the woman in the chair realized she was not alone.
"Who!" She called out, startled, but quickly recovered, "Ah, Saturn! Pleasure to see you again bitch. Where's Venus, the little traitor must be nearby. Come on out, I can feel you lurking there."
Venus stiffened and stepped reluctantly out of the shadows, their plan blown. It was actually surprising that it had gotten this far without any mishaps.
"I see you've picked up a gundam pilot as well. How cute. I've waited a long time, saving up all the pain I've felt over these long years, to share it with you." The voice continued, a niggling thought at the back of Hotaru's mind surfaced as she studied the woman's aura of tarnished silver with faint blots of pinkish red around the edges. It felt almost... familiar.
Duo snorted, confused and not at all pleased about it. Plus, her whining was pissing him off. "Oh, get over yourself," He snapped, "Life is pain, Princess, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."
The woman in the chair gasped in outrage, and Mina groaned, covering her eyes with both hands, good job Duo, she thought, let's antagonize the homicidal maniac.
Hotaru gestured, her scythe appeared, and Duo pulled his gun, as the huge chair turned slowly to face the group.
She was monstrous, a small huddled form wrapped in wires and electrodes in a tall chair with cables connecting to the walls and screens around her like a spiderweb. Her skin was paper-thin, almost translucent and stretched tight across her skin, a few strands of pale hair clung to the skin around an open skull, twinkling with wires and flashing microchips.
Pale hair, red eyes.
Pale, pink hair.
Hotaru's scythe clattered to the ground.
She was much too old, too dark and too ravaged for it to be possible, but it was.
"Rini?" She gasped, tears welling up in her eyes. Her mind flashed back to the attack. Pain. Portal. Chibi-usa wailing in the Queen's dead grasp. Portal. Pain. "You couldn't have survived. You couldn't have."
Rini smiled, meaning to be grim, but ending up with grotesque. "No, you forgot to kill me with the rest of my family. You'll regret it as I pin you up by your hands like my father. Or how about I rip out your spine, how my mother died?" Her voice started as calm, but ended in a scream.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Mina roared back at her. "We died that day with them. How can you blame us for a youma attack that took us all by surprise? We survived by luck, dammit, luck we didn't deserve, but we did not stand by and let them die. We fought!"
"No!" Rini thrust her hands out in front of her, and all three of them were blown back off their feet. "You lie! You controlled the youma with your powers and then ran away through a portal!"
"No." Hotaru said firmly, even if she swayed as she re-gained her footing. "The youma came on their own. Search your memories Rini, you can find the truth."
Rini shrieked again, throwing another wave of power at the trio, but Duo had stumbled to Hotaru's side, and, adding his considerable power to hers, she managed to throw up a hasty shield that blunted Rini's attack.
"Think!" Hotaru intoned gravely, "Would allies, friends, do that to you?" She gestured at the wires protruding from all over her body.
"I need this to live!" Rini snapped back, though she seemed less sure of herself than before, "The power was ripping me apart. I needed this."
"How long have you been looking for us?" Mina piped up. Hotaru shot a questioning glance at her, but Mina held Rini's gaze.
"Centuries." Rini replied.
Mina nodded, as if that's what she'd been expecting. "I was never good at mind tricks. You're bound to be much better than me, I can't lie mind-to-mind. I'm not that good, and you can feel it. Read my mind, dig through my memories, whatever. You'll find we're telling the truth."
Rini stared at Mina until she wanted to squirm under her sharp, unwavering gaze, then, finally, nodded. She reached out a tendril of power, and their blood sang in recognition. Rini tried to ignore the rampant elation that swept through her veins, well, the veins she had left, at the touch of Mina's aura. She tried to ignore it, and almost succeeded, but then the images started, followed by sensations and feelings and then all she knew was a battle long, long ago.
Mina's memories burned. There were youma everywhere, attacking. Through Minako's eyes, she saw her father fall under a crippling blow dealt by a tall purple-furred youma as her mother clutched a wailing baby to her chest.
It was her, she realized belatedly, the screaming baby was her.
She saw her mother's eyes widen as the youma turned on her, licking Mamoru's blood from their fingers, laughing in triumph. She felt Mina's desperation to protect her queen and princess, and the anguish as her king died. She saw Hotaru battling a short horned creature, tears streaming down her face, and a pike sticking out of her back where, as she would later learn, Hotaru had punctured a lung. She felt the energy blast searing her left shoulder blade, knocking her forward onto a set of jagged claws...
Rini tore herself away, gasping. No. No! This couldn't be!
But it was, everything fit. All holes of memory filled. It was the curious disappointment assembling a thousand- piece puzzle, and after a long toil, the picture you ended up with was nothing like the one on the box. Her world had shattered. She let out a sob, but her cheeks were dry. She wished she could cry.
*****
As Mina and Rini joined their minds, Duo noticed something familiar out of the corner of his eye. It shone with a soft inner light and was behind Rini's monstrous chair, in the center of a tangle of wires. He nudged Hotaru with an elbow and jerked his head in the direction of the object.
"The silver crystal!" Hotaru hissed in surprise, "We thought it had been lost! That must have been the power source we were looking for!"
Duo nodded, fading back into the shadows silently to make his way toward the crystal. It wasn't necessary though, Rini's attention was focused entirely on Mina and whatever private exchange was going on.
As he reached the tangle of wires, and was trying to figure out the best way to disconnect the ancient gem, Rini let out a keening wail, and ripped out of her trance. She stared at her hands, as if in shock, and whispered, "No."
Her eyes snapped up to meet first Hotaru's, then Duo's. "No. This can't be. This is all wrong."
*****
Rini's mind was reeling from the shock.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
But she could make it right again.
She turned to Duo. "Give me the crystal."
"What?"
"Give me the crystal. All they want is to go home. I can send them back, this plane of existence is driving them mad." She shuddered at her borrowed memories of the attack. "That's how Beryl got them to fight you, and I've been doing the same thing." She shook her head, "It's too late. Too late. Too late." Her voice trailed off in a singsong, and she shook her head again. "All this time, I believed you had opened that portal, that you were the ones responsible for this, but it was me, wasn't it? I got so lost." She smiled a little, "I promised myself I wouldn't rest until I'd punished my parent's murderers." She let out a wry chuckle, "Guess I did that, trapping them on a horrible plane of existence. I just want to go home." She said quietly in a very small voice. "And now I will."
Hotaru was too shell-shocked to reply, but Duo, calm as ever in his Shi persona, stepped forward. "No princess," he held the crystal away from her, "The machinery holding you together will short-circuit! It will kill you!"
"I know. Everyone's got something to atone for." She snapped, her guilt weighing heavy on her shoulders, "I have more than most. It's only fair that my price should be higher." Dear god, she wished she could cry. Emotions, unfamiliar after sustaining herself for so long on anger and hate welled up inside, but over them all, was a deep-seeded fatigue. Finally, she would get to rest.
"No." Hotaru snapped, finally seeming to realize that her best childhood friend was about to commit a suicidal act, "I won't let you die."
"They won't let me live. I'm too dangerous. Unstable." She gestured to Duo, as if he encompassed the resistance at large. "Don't spoil this for me. I've been waiting a long time to put my mother's murders to rest, now I will." Her eyes shone with the power of the silver crystal. "I've been holding on too long. I will put this right. Now run. Run as fast as you can. I understand now. Damn you Puu, I understand now. Tears trickled down her cheeks. As she sang softly to herself, 'Baby's been lied to, Mama said, Mama said...'"
******
Mina looked at Hotaru in barely restrained panic, as Rini's eyes unfocused and she began chanting under her breath. "She's going to open a portal to the negaverse? Here? Now?"
Hotaru gulped, and nodded. "Duo stop!" She yelled as he began high-tailing it for the door.
He whipped around, "Why? You heard her. Big kablooie, we should run. I rather like having all my parts securely attached."
"He's right," Mina agreed, "I she was your best friend way back when, but you heard her, you can't stop her, this is something she has to do."
Hotaru's eyes misted a little, remembering her childhood friend, not the cyborg that sat before them, "I'm not going to stop her. You're right Mina, you should run, get Heero and Quatre, but Duo and I are staying here."
"Uh-uhn! Speak for yourself sis!" Duo snapped, then paused, looking pensive, "Actually, you're not going to speak for yourself as you're not staying either." In a flash, he'd swung Hotaru up over his shoulder in a traditional fireman's carry, where her small fists beat ineffectively at his back. "Go, Mina, get the others, we'll catch up." Mina nodded and took off full speed down the stairs. He started for the door, but then Hotaru began to speak, saying something that stopped him in his tracks.
"You leave this room, you kill us all." She hissed, though her warning was slightly less menacing as it came from a few inches below his shoulder blade.
"What?"
"To create a portal you need to rip the fabric of one reality to reach into the next. The rip itself doesn't take that much power, but one that big, plus pulling all the youma from Earth and the colonies into the portal would probably drain Rini and kill her, even without overheating circuits in her brain. It's controlling it that's the problem. Once a rip is that wide, it's just keep on tearing under it's own weight. Containing the portal and sewing it back up afterward will drain the silver crystal, then it's only us standing between our universe getting sucked into hell. Literally." Hotaru's nostril's flared at the end of her rant. Duo set his twin back on the ground.
"That doesn't make sense. Pluto's gone back and forth probably a million times, and that didn't kill her."
She shook her head. "Genius, if you'd spent more time listening to Pluto, instead of staring at her chest-don't bother to deny it-you'd know that she uses the time gates, not portals. Creating the portal to send Mina and I to the future drained Pluto enough for a beta-level youma to kill her. Not with a magical attack either. With claws." Duo paled, remembering how infinitely strong Pluto had seemed. Hotaru took a deep breath, "Remember when the silver millennium fell, how Pluto told us we couldn't fight, how it was too dangerous for us to use our power then, and how our time would come to end it all? Well, I think this is what we've been saving it for."
"So there's no way we can weasel out of this?"
"Doesn't look like it, no. What happened to cool, calm, 'I like to blow shit up' boy?"
"He prefers living. Hey, eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
"You'll be a really dead weasel if we don't stop this tear from getting any bigger. Right now."
"Well, crap. How come we have to save the world? The world's doomed."
"Yep."
****
The silvery light swirled around the tower, as the light grew brighter, tentacles sprang out of the mass, stretching toward every youma on the planet, snapping them back into their home dimension.
The sky over the plain where Dorothy, Wufei, and Trowa fought was flooded with light, and, one by one, the mobile suits began to collapse as their pilots were spirited away.
"Aw. They're gone." Dorothy pouted as Wufei and Trowa leaned back in their seats trying to catch their breath. "Just I was about to make with the snappy banter."
****
The rip encompassed the entire south wall of the tower now, Rini kneeling before it, as if in prayer, her eyes and mouth frozen open in a silent scream. Time was slowing down, she'd heard it did funny things as you were dying. All she could see was white, everywhere. Her blood burned and screamed, and tried to wring itself free of the power that flowed through it, the power that was killing her.
Because it's always about the blood.
A thousand needles were scraping along the surface of her skin, and her metal components felt as if they were, melting, fusing, burning it's way out of her body...
...And then, the pain was gone.
Slowly, but steadily, a castle materialized out of the endless white, followed by two tall human silhouettes and three feline ones. "Mama? Papa?..."
****
Rini was overloading, sparks leapt free of her skull as liquid metal mixed with blood poured like sweat from the pores of her skin. Hotaru was shaking, though if Duo asked, she would have said it was from the strain on holding the portal steady. Rini whimpered once, then, in a surprisingly clear voice, gasped, "Mama? Papa?" Then toppled over, dead.
Light exploded, it seemed that Rini was doing a fair bit of controlling the portal herself before she had succumbed.
Hotaru reached for Duo's hand blindly. "Ready?" She asked.
"As I'll ever be." He replied, setting his jaw.
****
Racing back up the stairs, boys in tow, Mina cursed Hotaru and Duo. Why hadn't they followed? They had to get out of that towed before it collapsed on them!
They turned a corner, opened the door to the tower stairwell, and were immediately blown off their feet as a tidal wave of bright white energy bowled them over. Pushing them back from the tower for a few moments before a purple light washed over the white, steadily forcing it back into the tower.
"What the heck was that?" Quatre groaned, trying to extract himself from the wall.
Mina swore, and began limping up the stairs, "The portal energy!" She screamed back over her shoulder, "'Taru and Duo must be containing it! They must be in a trance! We have to get them out of there! The building's going to collapse!" As if to punctuate her words, ominous cracks promptly appeared on the walls and ceiling.
"They're stuck in there?" Heero asked.
Mina nodded, and continued limping up the stairs, and just then, witnessed just how fast soldier-boy could move when his best friend, and pseudo-crush were in trouble.
****
Too much, it was too much. She could feel Duo's exhaustion, and the portal was only just contained, at this rate, they wouldn't be able to get it more than half closed. Duo's hand slipped from hers as he sank to his knees beside her.
The world was spinning, and she was terribly tired.
"I'm sorry Puu," She thought, we couldn't do it. She just wanted to sleep. Sleep was good, there was no pain. No dead friends, no bad memories, no pain, no death, just peace.
She could use a little peace.
She sat down and slowly closed her eyes. She head the door burst open, but somehow she couldn't be bothered to care.
She slipped away.
****
"No!" Heero's mind screamed as he saw Hotaru collapse to the ground, frantically scrambling over the increasing debris, he rushed to her side, noting that Mina and Quatre had done the same for Duo.
She looked so pale, hardly breathing, black hair in sharp contrast to her chalky complexion. In spite of the growing silver light around them, she looked dead.
No. She would live.
If she was dead he would kill her.
****
Hotaru could feel someone lift her head from the ground and give her a rough shake. She frowned slightly. Didn't this inconsiderate person know that she was trying to sleep. Big meanie.
She was extremely prepared to ignore it, but she felt a sharp slap on her cheek, and that was enough to make her angry.
*****
"Wake up Hotaru. Dammit, you stupid, stupid girl. Wake up! Get up! You're not done yet. Get up you lazy sow! Get up!" Heero shook the unresponsive girl in his arms once more for good measure.
"Wake up Hotaru. Please?"
*****
She opened her eyes slowly, ready to curse at her tormenter sleepily, then go back to bed, but as her eyes focused, she saw Heero, surrounded by falling bits of tower and haloed in the light of the portal, and the words died on her tongue as the desperate look on his usually stoic face was replaced by amazement. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
Her stomach knotted as she fought the urge to squirm under his intense stare. It wasn't necessarily unpleasant, just strange. They way he was looking at her, she'd never seen anyone with that expression on their face, certainly not on Heero. It was softer than his usual blank slate, his mouth relaxed and the hard lines around his eyes vanished as the light of the fire danced inside. It was a look of awe.
He stared at her as if he'd never seen a woman before, and in that moment, helpless and unwilling, she realized he was beautiful.
She didn't want to sleep anymore. She didn't want to die.
Flinch. Pain screamed up her veins and pulsed around her brain.
The violet light waned once more around their huddled group. Though the edges of her vision were beginning to fuzz, she saw Mina close her eyes and lean into Quatre's chest, as he wrapped his arms so desperately around her that she had blood running down her face and he had a black eye.
She felt Heero's hand tighten around hers and pull her closer.
She grit her teeth.
They were not going to die today.
****
Purple light surged and lifted both Hotaru and Duo off the ground, laces of light reached out toward Heero, Mina, and Quatre, locking their power into the twins, then stretching out for more, first touching those with magical power, then drawing a little from those without, touching every human being on the planet, and drawing a little strength from each.
With a final flare, the portal collapsed into itself. At the sudden lack of resistance, the twin's trance broke, and, exhausted and ten feet up in the air, they suddenly dropped to the ground with an audible thump. Duo was unconscious, but Hotaru looked up, her purple eyes glazed over, content, tired, pained and more than a little out of it, "That was nifty." She giggled, and flopped over onto the ground, joining her brother in unconsciousness.
Heero and Quatre looked on in shock. He that really happened?
Their reverie was broken by the sound of metal cables snapping an a far-off explosion.
"Guess we won't be taking the elevators." Mina smirked, "Let's get out of here."
****
A few hours later, Dorothy, Wufei, and Trowa found them sleeping in an exhausted pile at the foot of the grove where the gundams had been hidden, a few hundred meters from the ruins of what now remained of OZ.
That night, Hotaru had the first undisturbed night of sleep since her original hellish journey to the future, instead she'd sees a young, happy Rini in her parents arms. They had been trapped in the crystal they explain, now shattering the crystal, all their souls have been set free. She sees her friends young and carefree, and says her final goodbyes. She's sad, but she knows it's was a necessary evil. Now they're no longer trapped in that never ending cycle of being re-born to fight the same evil, over, and over again. She's uncertain about the future, the first time she's ever lived without a destiny already mapped out for her, but for now, she's trying not to think about it, and instead heal, and take a well-deserved rest.
Heero's still confused about his feelings, and currently cursing himself for letting Hotaru wrangle a promise from him not to block his emotions using his programming again, when he was all relieved and tired. He resolves to hate her in the future. Sneaky little bint.
Duo is still blissfully asleep, though not unconscious.
Mina and Quatre, well, they... um... are VERY happy to be alive-take from that what you will-moving on now.
Wufei's happy everyone survived, but not at all pleased at Hotaru and Heero's budding relationship. First thing in the morning, he's digging up everything bad about Heero he can find.
Trowa's still fuzzy on the details of how the world was saved, but for now he's content to let it lie, and simply be alive.
Finally, that night, Dorothy and Iria proceeded to get smashingly drunk.
THE END (Well, sort of... epilogue and previews of a sequel forthcoming, check back and vote for which sequel you'd like to see, also the final edit including some lost in-between scenes, and the full thank-yous will be added with the epilogue, or soon after.)
There it is, folks, thanks to every single reviewer (I love you guys, love love love love!) And everyone who's beta'd along the way.
Please, PLEASE tell me if you think this chappie worked or not, it really was extremely hard to write, and I don't currently have an official beta for these last few bits, so it was really, really difficult to decide if it worked or not.
Review! Good/bad, sequel/no sequel, whatever! Thanks so much for reading and encouraging me along the way!
