Chapter 6: Proper preparation prevents.

"Are you sure this will work?" Ranma asked the blind avatar of Mercury.

"About seventy five percent," she replied. The two of them were kneeling in the dojo. It was already closing on midnight and the only light was she by the moon and stars visible through the open doorway. Ami was wearing a blue yukata bound at the waist by a simple red cord., her eyes were resolute if unfixed. Ranma was wearing a black kimono, dragons coiling upon it and was obviously concerned.

"We should begin" Ami insisted. Ranma took a moment to steel himself and then began centring himself.

"Ready!" he said as the familiar calm fell across his person.

"Ready" replied Ami, trying to hide the waver in her voice. She, more than him knew the risks of what they were attempting. She had seen the dead husks of people that they had failed to save after undergoing half of this procedure and the Mercury computer had been all too adept at pointing out the probabilities of catastrophic failure.

Ranma reached out with his power, channelling it through an outstretched palm. Using his power in this way was not something he had ever expected to be doing but the senshi seemed to know what she was asking. Gently he focused his energies on the very core of the girl sitting opposite him, locating the hard centre of her essence. Then with a wrench he pulled it forward and out.

Ami screamed once and slumped forward. A pure golden light rushed from her chest, trailing tiny motes of golden dew.

Her very soul floated, sparkling between them. Even as it rotated both of them could make out the dark scar running across it, permanent evidence of her encounter with the demon that killed her friends.

"You must be careful" Ami whispered through drying lips, "do not hide the computer within, you must blend…"

Ranma glanced at her slumping form and raised the computer in question from by his side and leaned towards the soul. But even aqs he approached he could see the shadow of his taint falling across the purity that he observed.

"Damn!" he cursed. He should have anticipated this. "Setsuna!" he called, his voice carried on empowered wings.

What seemed like precious minutes later the senshi of Time appeared in the doorway to say she was shocked would have been one of life's most profound understatements. Ranma however didn't give her the time to worry.

"You need to hold the soul now!" he commanded in his best sensei voice. Setsuna was obeying before her mind managed to process the scene.

"What's going on-" she began, suspicion starting to alarm her.

"Hush!" Ranma demanded, "Concentrating!" He pulled in his power as hard as he could, reigning in his aura, burying it deep within himself. Unkown to him this provided Setsuna with a true view of his form, undisguised for the first time since they had met. The sight nearly turned her stomach. Instead of the darkly handsome man she had come to know and admire there sat the broken, twisted form of the mortal who defied hell. Scars overlaid scars, burning lights looked out from destroyed sockets where the man's eyes should have been, only tiny tufts of hair remained between the scarring on the man's scalp and the mouth was an elongated wound in the scarred mess of a ruined face.

With his power reigned in Ranma reached out the computer in a broken hand and carefully tried to blend the computer into the stilled soul. Fortunately Mercury had set up a protocol to activate. First the computer flared bright, its tone moving to match the glow of Ami's soul, then the two of them began to pulse in unison. Finally the computer slid gently into the glowing orb of Ami's essence. Ranma released it and let it drift in the final part under it s own steam. Gritting his teeth he sat back and slowly let his power expand.

Setsuna heard his bones crunching, grinding and clicking back into place, watched the skin stretch smooth and push back into place. Her stomach churned, her bile rose and she had to turn her face away before she sprayed her dinner all over the dojo.

"Setsuna" Ranma coughed through dry lips, "push the soul back into place!"

"Hai" she agreed and complied. Ami sucked in a huge breath and then …had a fit. The senshi of Mercury fell to the floor and began twitching and spasming randomly. Her eyelids fluttered constantly, revealing only the whites visible beneath.

"Holy!" Setsuna swore, backing off, before rapidly changingher mind and moving to tyr an help.

"No!" Ranma commanded. "she said this might happen. Just give her some room. She has to face this part herself."

"But her head, she might-"

"No Setsuna" Ranma chided, slowly easing himself up, "let her be. Have some faith in your friends." With that he retreated to the door, stretching his limbs out and slowly rotating his neck. Setsuna looked once at the calming form of her friend and followed Ranma.

"I'm sorry" she said, "I'm just not used to this…"

"Setsuna" Ranma said, "None of us are. But we do need to pull together. This is no time to fall apart, too many peoples' futures rely on us." For a long moment silence reigned. Then Setsuna broke it.

"Why?" she asked, "Why do you do this? We are entrusted with this world since ancient times, but you-"

"What's in it for me?" Ranma asked gently. He motioned for her to sit on a rock next to the ornamental pond and took a seat next to her. "They hurt me really badly when they had me" he began. Setsuna went to interrupt, to tell him he didn't need to ell her, to save him the pain, bvut he stopped her with an open palm and continued. "But the physical stuff was only part of the story. "They always found new ways to make it hurt but to be honest you can cope with that; pain is, at the end of the day, a figment of your imagination. So they found other ways to hurt you. Little things like letting you make friends with another prisoner, then turning you against each other, making you betray one another, letting you see the hate in their eyes and know that you put it there. They let me cultivate a pet, in between the stripping of my skin and the abuse they let me raise a tiny creature, it was small, green and barely sentient. Then they tricked it, turned it against me, I lashed out and then they revealed their tricks, caught us both in a cycle of guilt and hate.

"It went on like that for decades, little bright spots given to you so you could truly appreciate the horror of the situation. They let you lift yourself up so they can knock you down again. So sooner or later you stop trying, you lie their broken and bloody and wallow in your own pain and despair. Believe me I was there more times than I could count, all hope gone, surrendering to my fate.

"The difference was I picked myself back up again. Each and every time I found my strength again and fought for the light. It amused them no end.

"During one of those darkest times I was looking for a reason to bother and I made a promise to myself. I promised that I wouldn't give up, wouldn't stop trying to…"

"And this is part of that" Setsuna guessed, "You're fighting them to prove you haven't given up."

"That's part of it" Ranma agreed.

"And so are we" Setsuna guessed, "we're the latest version of the little green beast. Pets" this time it was her turn to stop him interrupting. "Okay, more not pets, but you get the idea. We are your attempt to ad some life to your life."

"That's not-"

"the way you see it" Setsuna replied, "that doesn't make it any less true." She finished rising from her seat, "or any less important. Don't get me wrong Saotome-san," she continued, "If that is what you need then I for one am more than happy to help. And if you find that you need more then perhaps that too might be do-able." She finished with a look from her dark eyes that hinted of hidden depths.

"Whooo" Ranma whispered to himself, now alone in the nighted garden.

O

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"Right ladies we need to start planning," Ranma began. He, Neptune and Pluto were sat in the dining room having just cleared breakfast away. "First the uniforms," he began.

"What's wrong with the uniforms?" Pluto asked.

"We are going to be crossing the plains of Hell to get to the fortress, go dressed like that and every lust demon in hell will be trying to paw you before you have gone six feet." Ranma explained, "and besides they are hardly the most practical of fighting outfilts."
"Huh?" Neptune asked, never having had a problem with them.

"Stiletto heels and skirts so short they barely cover your underwear," Ranma sneered, " not to mention that the colour schemes are designed for anything but camouflage. Added to that the protection they provide proved less than adequate. No girls, we need something not only more subtle but also something with a little more stopping power."

"I think I may have an answer" interrupted a new voice. It had an odd reverberation to it, a hint of something artificial. The trio turned to look, only to find a very changed Sailor Mercury regarding them. She stood there in the doorway to the yard, wearing her blue yukata but beneath it a new silvery pattern could be seen on her skin, a pattern bearing a marked resemblance to the inner workings of a computer. At her temple a pair plug ports could be seen, dull gun-metal grey in stark contrast to her light skin.

"Ami!" Neptune exclaimed.

"Ami?" Setsuna echoed.

"Welcome back" Ranma offered, waving a hand to indicate that she could take a seat. Ami nodded once and knelt into the proffered space with all the grace and precision that they expected of her, but this time there was just an extra edge, was she just a little bit less graceful and a little bit more precise. Ranma nodded, prompting her to explain.

"With my new method of interface I have come across several hidden features. I have come across a secret fileset on the computer. Hidden below this city is the last fortress. When Earth fell to the enemy all those centuries ago it was neither as sudden nor as complete as history tells us. One fortress held out for much longer than the rest of the planet, fought to the last and when they fell, rather than let the fortress be claimed by the enemy they sealed it. With explosives and through an effort of will they closed the fortress. What the file tells me is that the defenders hoped to save some of the contents of that castle, so they left the underground central chamber intact, in the sincere hope that it would take so long for the enemy to excavate to that depth that the Lunar forces would prevent them. The reason they fought so hard was that this was not just any fortress, it was the Lunar bunker: a backup for much of the military structure of the moon. Undoubtedly it has been breached since the fall I postulate that it is the source of much of what the moon cats provided for us."

"Moon cats?" Ranma asked.

"Lunar advisors," Setsuna explained, "they were cryo-frozen and revived to help the senshi of our time."

"Where are they now?" he asked.

"To be honest we sort of expected them to turn up before now," Neptune admitted. "I haven't seen them since before the fight when we met you."

"There is a high probability that they have assessed Saotome-san to be a threat" Ami offered, "it is likely that they are even now preparing a plan to 'rescue us'." For a moment the four of them considered the picture of two gun-toting cats kicking the door down and attacking them kung-foo style.

Saotome Nodoka walked into her front room to find her new house guests silently sharing some joke. "I'm going out" she announced, "is there anything else we need?"

"No thank you" Ranma replied, "we'll get what we need later."

O

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Midnight found a quartet of blacked out figures breaking into the Juban mall. Each lock and alarm fell rapidly by the wayside as the newly 'enhanced' Mercury interfaced, scanned of electromagnetically manipulated them.

Finally they broke into the hair salon that used to be the arcade. They fanned out in a tactical pattern, leaving Ranma and Ami to use their unique abilities search for the entrance.

"Here" Ami called, pointing at a wall with an outstretched arm. All eyes turned to look for a moment then returned to their stations. Ami moved out to cover another angle, letting Ranma move to the wall.

The demon-touched artist leant his palms into the wall and concentrated. Dark energy flowed around him, dancing like black lightning. Then it was gone and the man stood back as if to admire his handiwork. A second later a five foot hole opened in the wall, the substance of it crumbling like powdered sand.

As the air once more disturbed the long forgotten corridors of an ancient fortress an unearthly howl resounded from an unhuman throat.

"We move!" Ranma commanded and led the way into the hole and the future. Behind him the senshi marched, silent and determined.