Prices Paid 7: the lost citadel.
The darkness was absolute, for any other group this might have been a serious hindrance but the magical girls and their new ally barely noticed the dimming. Ami's new eyes more than capable of seeing without light, Ranma's eyes more than accustomed to a deeper darkness and the other two gifted with items whose glow revealed all they needed.
As the quartet advance they passed the ruined signs of war, stalagmite encrusted tunnels that were littered with the remains of battles fought before human history as they knew it. Here and there the columns had grown to pierce the bodies of the fallen, lifting them up in cruel parodies of life. The procession was nothing if not eerie. However eerie was a lot more manageable than deadly.
Ami was the first to notice the signs, on the floor she spotted the cautious tracks of moon cats. This was nothing unexpected, the surprise was in how new the prints were.
"Fresh" Ami intoned, the others stopped and then nodded their response, each face set in a grim mask.
Ahead the corridor widened into a larger chamber, one that even now seemed to echo with the noise of the battle that had raged within. The ghosts of the dead were all too close. Ranma waved a hand, signalling for the girls to fan out. The girls obeyed, weapons readied.
It was unnecessary, the room, but for the detritus of battle, was deserted. The team let out a slow breath of relief, the first hurdles seemingly behind them. Nevertheless not one broke the professional silence or stood down from their alert bearing. Much had changed since the heady days of their youth.
Across the chamber a large steel door loomed, bound in ancient metals and re-enforced with magic against all intruders, and enemies, including time itself. The team approached, and took up covering positions from safe locations, allowing Ami to scan the door more thoroughly.
"The magic is intact, the door will resist our attempts" she informed them in her oddly mechanical voice, "we must discover a key or an alternative."
"The cats passed" Pluto broke in, causing a re-evaluation.
"I have found their way" Ami replied, pointing a hand at one corner of the door, it blinked, an illusion shedding. Set into it was what appeared all purposes to be a cat flap. More than one face split into a wry smile.
"Not much use to us?" offered Neptune, not entirely sure. She turned to Ranma. He in turn shrugged, nothing sprung to mind. He was only;y too aware that the defences of the site were purpose built to defend against the sort of power he wielded.
"It couldn't be that simple" Pluto murmerred, causing all eyes to fix on her. "I remember a door like this on the moon." she offered in reply to the silent question, "there was a latch on the inside to allow rapid exit.." Ranma waved her forwards, she nodded once and moved to the diminutive door. The others turned back to their watch positions.
Setsuna was forced to lie on the floor, pushing her whole arm through the flap. Such was the change that had come over her that she did not even register the dirt that immediately stained her uniform. She used her staff like a long arm, looping the heart shaped end over the catch release and pulling. Which is when things started to go wrong.
Defences long dormant reactivated on the opening of the door. They immediately deployed against the unidentified interlopers, blazing bright lasers at their fragile forms. Even worse the door swung open with pneumatic force, and with Pluto's arm still through it.
Even as Setsuna's cry of agony rent the air the others were reacting to the new danger. Ranma drew his cloak of shadows around the team, warding them from one side at least. Ami fell back to one knee, absorbed in her sudden battle against the recognition software. Which left Neptune to defends the rest of them. She flicked up an ancient breast plate from the floor and used it as a makeshift shield, only to find that it soon warmed up.
Pluto's long scream continued but nobody was able to help as they continued their own fight for survival. Ranma lashed out with a wing-tip, destroying emplacement after emplacement as they continued to fire their deadly light. Ami crashed through ward after ward, firewall and encryptor, with brutal efficiency she was stripping the system of its defences, scenting victory her lip curled up in a small smile, one that was far from the sort she used to wear.
Neptune held the armour, it was all she could do and she knew it. To drop it would leave all of them unshielded, however she didn't need to look at her hands to know the cost it was exacting, she could smell it and the agony was near mind-numbing.
"Got you" Ami crowed, the defences cutting out all but simultaneously.
The sudden silence was oppressive. It took each of the team precious heartbeats to realise what was missing. By that point Pluto had slipped deeper into shock. Ami was the first to reach her, Ranma a few steps behind. Neptune just collapsed where she stood, literally peeling her hands from the cooling armour.
"He suit will keep her stable" Ami reported, watching the readouts that only she could see. Ranma nodded and tried to ignore the vast amount of blood that covered every surface in the area. The senshi's arm was sheared at the shoulder, crushed apart by the swinging door, leaving only tatters of flesh trapped between metal sheeting to connect the guardian with her limb.
"We cannot leave her here alone" he mused, turning to Neptune, he too had smelled her flesh. "Can you still fight?" he asked. A pained nod was his reply.
"good" he agreed, "Mercury, you're with me" and with that he strode through the door. Behind him Neptune smiled through her pain, it was damn good to be trusted at her word. Now if only she had a way to shut out the goddamn pain.
Inside the facility the walls remained pristine. They gleamed bronze in the light shed by flickering lamps set into the ceiling and around the walls hung ancient drapes, preserved for hundreds of years in the still air, and now decaying at an astounding rate thanks to the recent intrusions. All this the duo saw and ignored, watching instead for the latest threat to manifest, deep down both knew they had yet to see the worst this facility had to offer.
Suddenly one of the drapes fell and the two intruders sprang for cover. Behind the drape a door suddenly disappeared into the floor. From the new maw a robot emerged. Made to look human but not too human its triangular torso supported a small head and a pair of vicious blade-wielding arms.
"Combat drone" Ami offered, "enchanted against dark energy."
"Fine" Ranma growled, springing in. In one smooth move he burst from the floor, hurling himself in low and fast. The bot brought its swords around in twin glittering arcs, threatening to sever Ranma from himself in a most gruesome manner. Instead it found its arms stopped, caught in the voice like grip of the daemon tainted warrior. He did not however stop there, even as the bot was computing this new pardigram Ranma continued the move, with a twist and a turn he threw the redirected energy of both his leap and the bot's arms into a neat circle. Both blades tore through the bot's chassis with a neat squeal and a shower of sparks. For a brief moment a light of intelligence seemed to shine in the automaton's eyes, only to go out leaving only a ired sigh.
Ranma stood turned and rotated his neck. With a small shrug he turned to Ami, waiting for her readouts to tell him which direction they needed to go. She gestured and they were off.
"You realise that those robots were state of the art" Ami queried, curiosity overriding professionalism, "and that tactical estimates claimed they could take on even the harshest of dark minion with a decent chance of victory?"
"Your tacticians were stupid" he replied curtly. Then he nodded along their path, none to subtlety reminding her of the job at hand. Before them loomed another door, shimmering with an electric arc.
"I can crack it" she ordered almost immediately, "Beyond should be the last command centre."
"And presumably the ones who are turning the centre against us," Ranma added, assessing angles for an expected fight. The door suddenly ceased crackling, its glow faded and with a smooth swish the door opened.
The expected fight appeared in the form of a burst of scintillating light. Ranma, alert as he was deflected the blast with little more than a nonchalant wave of his shadow-armoured arm. He followed the move with a leap and a bound, flexing his long shadow claws as he flew. Ami moved to back him up. Only it wasn't necessary Ranma had already dealt with their opponent.
Lying, quivering, on the floor in front of Ranma, his wings and claws, was a small black cat. Its companion was firmly trapped under a booted heel, mewling pitifully.
"Luna and Artemis" Mercury offered, "our former advisers."
"Former?" Artemis queried.
"You failed us," Ami explained, "when we most needed you you failed us." She might have continued but she was far too busy looking around the room. It was festooned with artefacts from the silver millennium, everything from piled gowns to rocket packs.
"We couldn't-" Artemis gasped around the pain, only to be suddenly cut off by her former protege's upraised hand.
"These are armoured suits" Ami said, pointing at a stack of plates and cloth.
"You mustn't touch them!" Luna insisted.
"They are dusty" Ami added, "they have been here for years, in this very spot!"
"Nobody is allowed to use them!" Luna objected.
"By my readings these could have stopped even a serious daemon blast," Ami said, with growing incredulity. "You knew these were here and you didn't-"
"Possessing them is against the highest laws of Serenity's court!" Luna interrupted. "With them an assassin could approach even the queen herself." Ami refused to dignify the argument, instead looking on the cat with open disgust.
"What we came for?" Ranma asked.
"They'll do for a start" Ami agreed, "I'll see what else is here. You get the med tube cracked open."
"Huh?" asked Ranma, unused to the sudden turn around, and not equipped to decode the mess of machinery as the senshi was. Ami pointed at a bank of oversized inverted test tubes connected to a large machine.
"They are cryo tubes" Ami explained "with a small tweak I can use them for cellular regeneration."
"Neptune and Pluto" Ranma agreed and got to work. For a moment Luna considered renewing their attack, an almost imperceptible glare from the dark warrior froze her in her tracks and almost loosened her bowels.
O
o
Dawn saw the quartet back at the Saotome residence. They had taken over the yard as a sorting place for all the gear they had taken from the hole. Transporting it back had required the temporary jacking of a van but this had since been returned to a site near where it was appropriated.
So far besides the armour suits the had found a myriad of useful items, from hand held scanners to mini-medical gear. Already Pluto and Neptune had appropriated themselves a set of metallic forearm guards that projected a plane of glowing force, instant shield.
"Reduced ration dispenser" Ami concluded, examining a bible sized white box. It seemed to be capable of synthesising the basics for survival from some very unlikely materials. The people consuming them wouldn't put on any weight but they wouldn't die of malnutrition either. She added it to a pile next to her, the 'maybes.'
Ranma was busy at another end of the yard, using Michuru to test the cloaking function of the new suits against his own tainted senses. So far they were proving remarkably robust.
"If your society could make these why the heck were you lumped with the doll suits?" he asked. Michuru just shrugged, still getting used to the power assisting functions, and all the other 'extras' the suit included.
The only missing senshi was sat apart looking intently at her right arm, and the armoured suit clutched in it. Where it had been flesh, skin and bone now it was sheer grey. A matt metalled replacement for that which she had lost. It had been discovered among the medical gear, and shown up in the archives as being a fairly standard replacement for injured soldiers. The prosthetic would allow her to feel almost as well as the meat version ever had., with the proviso that she would be able to filter out the extremes. It would also provide a significantly more forceful right hook. Nevertheless the arm and suit were causing the senshi more than a little consternation.
They had turned against their advisor's, in fact they had incarcerated them, they had abandoned the patterns that their Queen had laid down. They had even turned against the quiet principles of engagement that the senshi had always lived by, never before had they fought on a 'strike first and hang the questions' basis. Add to this their alliance with someone who was blatantly hiding things, and dubious enough with what they could see; and all of a sudden a pattern started to emerge. In all the years of her prolonged existence Pluto had dreamed of a bright future and now she had had cast that dream aside seemingly as readily as she was now casting aside the uniform she had worn for generations.
"How far have we come?" she mused, bitterness in her voice, "Or should that be fallen?" The arm had never been in any of the visions she had seen in the gate. Looking at it now it was an all too solid symbol of the changes that were forcing themselves on her. "when did I stop asking questions?" she mused.
"You don't mean that" Ranma's mother interrupted, suddenly appearing in front of the other lady.
"I don't?" asked Setsuna with a wry smile.
"Not really" Nodoka replied, gathering her dress to sit. "Your real problem isn't the arm, the suit, or even trusting the creature that my son has become."
"Oh?"
"No the real problem is harder than
that," Nodoka explained, "I still remember my father going
through it before he went to war."
"Your father, war?"
Setsuna replied, adding up the numbers and coming up short.
"Not that war" Nodoka replied, "it was something else, but something no less deadly. My father was a swordsman, like myself but back then my house was a school for kenjitsu. Another school challenged us, it got nasty. Blood was shed, and students died."
"I fail to see-" Setsuna interjected.
"He was a Christian in the true sense of the word, and beilived the words he found in the Book. Nevertheless he picked up his blade and went to war with the others. On the night afterwards I found him in the dojo, in front of the family shrine. It was then that he explained it. What you are feeling is what he felt. He called it a 'dark epiphany' the unquiet realisation of the dark parts of your own being."
"You are afraid not that you have been led down a dark path but that you chose to go," Nodoka concluded. "You are no child that can be led around by pretty stories, you know that and I know that. What you have done you have done because it needed to be done. There is no use blaming any one for-"
"Enough Saotome-san" the senshi interrupted. "I know you mean well but... I know you believe what you say but..." she drifted off once more into quiet introspection. Nodoka waited a while and then stood to leave, briefly clasping the other lady on the shoulder as she went.
"its not that simple" the guardian finished in a lost voice. And it wasn't. Yes she knew she was afraid of the darkness within her, but she had had to come to terms with that darkness a long time ago. This time she knew it was something else, it was a matter of control. Ever since she assumed the post Setsuna had struggled against the turbulent tides of existence to maintain her grip on the threads of fate. The arm was as blatant a symbol as anyone needed that she had dropped the reigns. Everything seemed to be moving so fast, the last battle, the drama of the next two, the changes that were overtaking them; Ami's anger, her crippling and the dramatic way how she had resolved both, Michuru's almost visible hurt and its transformation into anger and dark resolve. And now it had overtaken even her, every time she looked in the mirror for the last thousand years the same person had looked back and now it wouldn't. Her dream was turning into a nightmare and all she could do was hold on.
But was that the right decision. Deep down a part of her still believed that Usagi would have found another way, one that didn't involve the dark pact that her personal guard's remnants had struck. Looking back now Setsuna could see just how vulnerable they had been following the 'deaths' of their friends, and the sudden approach of a 'saviour' was all too convenient. Was there not a chance the cats were right, could they now be working for the very agencies that destroyed them. There was no way to be sure.
Setsuna looked up at her friends and a new thought occurred, 'did it matter.' The thought was unworthy of her but she thought it anyway. There could be no argument that the girls were more active now than when she met them in the hospital. If Ranma hadn't come along there could be little doubt that the place they met could easily have been their grave. So what had they really lost? Setsuna looked again at her arm and wondered still.
O
o
o
The others were just assembling for the evening meal when Ranma got 'that' feeling. It led him to the door, just in time to open it before Urd could knock.
"Uh?" she said intelligently, arm still raised into knocking position. She was dressed to impress, a shimmery outfit that was all cleavage and leg, covered enough to stop barely short of lingerie but only just.
"You have the list?" Ranma asked, following the stunned goddesses eyes to her other hand.
"Thank you" the warrior offered, removing the list, "and good night." Then he shut the door
"That wasn't very polite" Nodoka chided as Ranma returned.
"True" Ranma agreed, "If her information is right I'll apologise later."