Chapter 1: Awakening
Shadows filled the room like cobwebs, almost palpable in their darkness. There was no light, except for a faint glow radiating from a tall, pale crystal the size of a man.
There was a figure in it, a tall, blond man whose eyes shone with fear and whose hands were raised as if to ward off some great evil. He wore a grey-black uniform in a military style, edged with red.
The gloom was disrupted by a flash of ice petals, swirling around a small, lithe form, dressed in a yellow military jacket and somewhat ragged blue jeans. The silver-eyed figure reached up a hand to toy with a lock of gold hair, and looked around, drinking in the room's meager features. Her eyes lingered on the crystal.
Then she swore, taking the names of almost every major deity in all the worlds in vain.
'I overshot, damn it!' the silver eyes flashed with fury. She took a step forward towards the crystal, peering at it intently.
Oh well. So it won't go exactly to plan—judging from the crystal lines I overshot by about four months—that's not too bad. It only means Ky'll undershoot by four months—crap. That's eight months from now! Eight whole months! And there's no way I can summon Vega…
Crap.
Well, at least this means I get to help Jadeite out of that bloody crystal sooner than he would normally…
The girl held out a palm, and closed her eyes momentarily, concentrating. A globe of white-gold light coalesced on her open hand, shimmering beautifully.
The girl opened her eyes, which momentarily glowed the same shade as the globe of light. She placed the palm with the globe in it on the crystal, just above the imprisoned man's heart.
The crystal shattered, fragments flying everywhere, slicing into the girl's skin.
She fell to her knees, overwhelmed by a combination of the magnitude of the spell she had just used and the cuts and bleeding.
The man, on the other hand, looked like he had just woken up from a good long nap. Which, in effect, he had.
'Hi Lord Jadeite,' the girl said tiredly. 'Please don't kill me. I really haven't been having a good day.'
Jadeite stared, stunned. What in hell had just happened? The last thing he remembered was Beryl sentencing him to eternal sleep…
He managed to recover enough to ask, 'Since you seem to know who I am, who are you? What are you doing?'
The girl coughed, wiped her mouth on the back of her yellow sleeve, leaving a trail of red, and replied, 'My name is Gaea, well, Electrum, I guess. Call me Electrum. More on that later. I would have thought the answer to your second question was pretty obvious, at any rate. I'm waking you up.'
Jadeite stared at her again, feeling rather pathetic in the fact that all he could do was stare at this strange girl, Electrum, who, from a mind-touch, had less than a quarter of his magical ability and yet had managed to break the crystal that had imprisoned him for—how long was it again? –while she sat on the ground in front of is former prison and coughed nonchalantly.
'Why?'
'Um…would it be way too 'Terminator' to say, I'm from the future and I'm here to help you?'
Jadeite was caught off-guard by that. 'What is this 'Terminator'? And why, of all of us, did you choose to help me? Nephrite and Kunzite are far stronger than I.'
Electrum grinned slightly. 'Don't worry about the first thing, just a little pulp-culture reference that's probably way out of date. To answer the second,' The girl blushed sheepishly, and coughed again.
'Well, see, 'cause I'm from the future and all that, I can't actually do anything to disturb the timeline, and, well, history says you stay put for the next thousand or so years, or, well, collapse into nothingness when the Negaverse is destroyed. So, if we're both careful, you'll be fine, and Sailor Pluto won't try to turn me into little particles of Electrum dust. Also, Nephrite's probably dead by now—check your senses, I doubt you'll find him on your radar—anywhere, and Zoisite and Kunzite have their part to play. '
Jadeite reached with his mind, and was surprised not to find the other King's presence there. 'How?'
She understood. 'Zoisite and some youma. Nephrite very foolishly fell in love with a schoolgirl, making himself vulnerable to Zoisite's attacks.' A flicker of pain flashed over her face at Zoisite's name. Jadeite stored this information away for later, and resumed paying attention to the girl, but she had finished talking, and had curled up with her head in her hands, asleep.
He sighed softly, and chewed his lip, thinking. He couldn't exactly stay here, and while it was tempting to leave the girl here, he had some sense of honour. She'd saved him from the crystal, therefore he owed her.
But how to get out of the Negaverse—alive?
The girl stirred. 'Teleport,' she whispered softly, still dreaming. 'She'll be too busy killing Zoisite to notice you…'
Jadeite looked down at the small body thankfully, bent, scooped it into his arms, and teleported to the safest place he could think of. Nephrite's mansion, currently uninhabited. He hoped.
He also hoped he knew the right way. He'd only seen it a couple of times, when as a drifting spirit he'd followed Zoisite's travels…It was all coming back to him now.
Why hadn't he remembered the dream-drifting earlier?
He had no time to think about this because they were currently inside Nephrite's mansion, and there didn't seem to be anyone else there. Safe. Phew.
He laid his burden on the floor, conjured a blanket and pillow for her, and set off to explore.
Electrum woke on a hardwood floor in a large hall. She recognized it instantly. Nephrite's mansion. Jadeite must have risked 'porting. And, which surprised her more than the teleportation itself, he'd bothered to bring her along.
Speaking of Jadeite, where was he? Now that she had some measure of her power back, and was actually in some state resembling sentient life, she needed to talk to him.
She conjured a mirror to test her magical potency in his time—she'd never time-travelled before, but the research they'd done had indicated that time-travelling had different effects on different people.
It didn't seem to have affected her magic, so Electrum conjured a hairbrush and ran it through her silky hair. She twisted the gold fibres into a silky rope and shoved them down the back of the blood-stained uniform jacket to keep the hair out of her face. Then she went in search of a bathroom.
Jadeite, in the course of his wanderings, had travelled though roughly half of Sanjoun Masato's obscenely large house, meandering through several completely empty rooms and a few sparsely furnished ones. After this evidence of a frugal lifestyle (not really supported by the mansion itself, but its furnishings), he'd been utterly amazed to find the wine cellar.
He'd known Nephrite liked wine, but this! The room was massive, twice the size of Beryl's throne room, and completely crammed with varying bottles of red, white, and green wines.
It almost made you want to get drunk.
He reached for a bottle, looked at the label. He couldn't read it. Typical. Nephrite, always a selfish bastard, had gone and bought wine with an English label, which Jadeite was in no mood to translate.
He swore, and threw the no-doubt-expensive bottle one the ground, drawing some small satisfaction from the noise it made hitting the ground.
He watched the red liquid pool at his feet, mesmerised as the wine spread along the floor. There was a hypnotic factor in the way the liquid spread…
He blinked, and shook his head. What was he doing behaving like Zoisite, besotted with Kunzite, or Nephrite with his human girl? Maybe he wasn't lovesick, but he'd seen the look on Zoisite and Nephrite's faces when they were with their respective significant others, and he was afraid his face, for those few moments, had assumed that expression.
He rubbed his forehead. If he was even thinking that, he needed some sleep. Obviously teleporting had taken a lot out of him.
He would go and get some sleep now. Yes, sleep felt like a good idea…
Electrum ran down the stairs, having pinpointed Jadeite's location through her magical talent. He didn't feel good, and she knew it hadn't been a smart thing to leave him unattended after he awoke.
She skipped the last three steps, and tripped, landing on her knees in the wine cellar. Silver eyes absorbed the racks and racks of wine bottles, as her magical senses kicked in, telling her he would be somewhere along this row…
She picked herself up and followed the magic, which led her to the young-looking man who lay on the brick floor, a pool of red liquid around his head…
Red liquid?
Oh no. No. No. No. Just her luck. She fell to her knees again beside the fallen Shitennou, cradling his head in her lap.
'Oh, Jadeite, I'm so sorry! I was so stupid!'
She brushed the red-soaked hair out of his face, trying to find where the blood had come from. There where several minor scratches around his face, but where was the serious one? She smelt alcohol, which had always made her feel nauseous. Not that that was a bad thing… she'd seen firsthand what alcohol did to normally clear-minded people.
Wait.
Alcohol?
She looked closer at Jadeite, and would have kicked herself, had she not been kneeling. She dipped a finger in the 'blood', tasted it, and grimaced. Yup. Definitely alcohol. He must have thrown the bottle on the ground for some reason, and then the energy loss had kicked in.
What an idiot she was!
She telekinetically swept the glass shards out from under Jadeite, conjured a pillow, and gently put his head on it.
What an idiot!
She conjured another pillow to sit on, and arranged herself to wait for Jadeite's awakening.
Sorry it hasn't gotten anywhere yet, but it'll pick up next chapter.
If anyone's actually reading this, thanks. If you could leave a review on your way out, it would be much appreciated…thanks anyway.
Yours turly,
flufflybunny