DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.
LOVE
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 6
** **
Above her, far in the distance, Nemesis was sling-shotted out of the physical reach of the Moon Kingdom. Serenity knew where the faint pin prick of light was, visible by the naked eye only because time and space in the Kingdom was not what it was outside of the Kingdom. The dot grew steadily dimmer, and the elder Guardian of the planet turned, horrified to her.
"Princess!" she howled, "How can your mother sacrifice a world of the Kingdom like that?"
Serenity was lost for words, unable to speak, knowing what would happen as soon as the planet left the life-bearing energies of the Kingdom.
"The same way the Queen could direct that comet to hit Mars," the senshi of Mars snarled. "Our worlds don't matter here anymore."
That's not true! Serenity wanted to say, to explain that her mother was sacrificing entire worlds to try to save what remained of the Kingdom. As civilisation grew on the planet Earth below, as the balance between nature and order was upset, so the balance between light and dark was being lost. And with that unbalancing, the Dark Kingdom, led by Beryl, made their push on the resource and energy rich homeworlds of the Moon Kingdom, entering that which they had been denied at the founding of the Kingdoms.
As Below, so Above.
Queen Serenity had at first tried to negotiate. When the Librariums had fallen to the depravities that had engulfed the Utopia University whole, the planet's administrative staff had been evacuated and bombarded with asteroidal matter from orbiting forge-satellites. While staffs had been removed from the planet by warp gates and evacuation transports and temporal corridors making microjumps across the system, the planet's population had been decimated.
Following the fall of Mercury, the Dark Kingdom Warhost attacked Mars, striking while the planetary defence fleets were hurriedly returning from Mercury. Zoicite, the Admiral of the Mercurian fleets, returned to find Mars' population held at ransom: the fleets to join the Dark Kingdom, else every man, woman and child on the planet would be slaughtered. Zoicite's loyalty to the Kingdom wavered for but a moment; he was an honourable man, and his duty, his loyalty, as was that of every member of the Kingdom, was to his King and Queen.
The King had paused in indecision. Queen Serenity didn't.
Zoicite was about to open fire on the enemy's encampments when, appearing via temporal corridor originating in the realSystem's Oort cloud, a mighty snowball, fully fifty kilometres across, sped past the orbiting ships. Dark Kingdom forces hurried to their own transport vessels as the snowball erupted in gas and dust, heated by the passage through the corridor and by the much nearer location to the sun, blew through the planet's atmosphere as if it didn't exist, and impacted in the planet. Nothing remained of the northern six hundred kilometres of the world, three kilometres of the crust had simply been shrugged off into space.
Half of the Warhost hadn't survived, but the surviving numbers were bolstered by Zoicite's defection in horror to the Dark Kingdom's Queen Beryl. The King had made a personal plea to Zoicite under a flag of truce, but the Admiral, in anger and misdirected hatred, struck the King to bring the pain he felt to Queen Serenity. The King had died in Martian orbit, and the war paused for a moment while both sides regrouped.
But then Venus fell, and Saturn, and Neptune, and Uranus. All that were left in the Moon Kingdom were the planets Jupiter, Pluto, Nemesis and the Moon itself.
And now, in the latest battle, Beryl's forces had set off a chain reaction of graviton bombs across the surface of Nemesis, thrusting the planet from its normal orbit and out into the cold depths of space.
Nemesis turned to the Princess, pain in her eyes, anger in her heart. "I can hear them, Princess, I can hear them dyi"
There wasn't even a snip of sound as the planet passed from the heart of the Kingdom. Once outside the barriers, the planet reverted to realSystem physical laws, and the inhabitants of Nemesis simply ceased to exist. This, of course, included the senshi of the planet. All that was left was a ball of energy, starting as the bright blue of the world Nemesis, fading to a dull grey, then black. The ball of energy hovered for a moment, then shot back into the palace, where Princess Serenity's mother would harness the energies of the fallen warrior for other purposes.
The guardians of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto now stood around the Princess. Mars was angry at the reason behind the loss of her homeworld, and only the fact that the Princess, the girl who she was assigned to protect, was just as horrified as the other Guardians.
Well, most. Pluto and Saturn took different views on such things, preferring more to cut out the heart of a living creature to save it from cancers in the extremities. Saturn herself had been responsible for the destruction of Venus when the Venusian fleets had defected also in response to Zoicite's passionate speeches on the horrors the Moon Kingdom's Queen was committing to keep her ever more fragile grip on power, her need to stay in control of everything. The Martian and Jovian fleets had soon followed.
While the Neptunian and Uranian fleets still fought for the Kingdom, they were being beaten back on all fronts, day in, day out. The future looked bleak, and while the Queen claimed victory would be theirs, even the everyday population of the Moon Kingdom was beginning to realise that something was wrong, there were too many communication blockages, too many disruptions to everyday services, too many incomplete news reports.
Endymion stood off to one side of the group, watching up into the skies, at the planet he had been named protector of. Earth cast a bluish light over the green lunar landscapes, and over everyone. It was full this morning, shining the brightest it did in the lunar dinurnal cycle. Behind him stood Luna and Artemis, the advisors to Serenity.
And then, as the bodyguards and their Princess stood, mostly quiet apart from Mars' angry accusations, Endymion noticed something in the sky. He looked back to his bethrothed, and then to Luna. "It comes," he said, quietly.
Luna nodded. "The Queen felt the breakthrough would come this morning."
"Too few ships remain in the fleet to protect the Moon's protective shell," Artemis agreed.
"What?" asked the Princess, distracted from the tirade. The calm statements even made Mars pause and look up.
Saturn sighed. "It is time."
"Not yet, please, Saturn," Luna begged. "Give us another few minutes! You know the Queen could be wrong, you know we might yet triumph here! What if you took to the skies in our defence?"
"Then if I fell, so would the Kingdom," Saturn said, before rising up into the skies, whirling the Silence Glaive in her hands. The Senshi looked to one another.
"What will happen now?" Serenity asked Luna, before the growing roaring noise from above drowned out her voice. She barely noticed Pluto gating out to her planet's command centre, as planned.
"Your mother will use the energy of the destruction of the Kingdom to seal the Dark Kingdom forces back in their realm, where they belong," Luna said. "Pluto will ride out the destruction of the Kingdom, and rebuild when it is possible, using the people on the planet Earth. And you... all of you Senshi... will be reborn on Earth. Given new lives, It will be your destiny to resurrect the Moon Kingdom, and rule over the solar system in the name of Light."
But by this time, there was too much noise. Nothing could be heard, even the glaive's sound was blanked by the noise it was creating. The light pouring from the glaive grew steadily, as did the light from approaching star ships.
And then, for a scant moment, time stopped. Serenity saw the Senshi around her, eyes lowered, forms kneeling in fealty, Endymion's eyes locked on hers, his lips mouthing the words "I will find you," before it all disappeared in white...
******
Usagi woke up holding her head. Three dreams in as many days. Possibly of historic content, great moments in the life of the Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom. Her early life, the beginnings of the war with the Dark Kingdom, and the end of the war.
After that final eternal moment, the barriers holding back realspace from the Kingdom were shattered, and the Moon Kingdom died, along with everyone existing in its boundaries. But at the same time, the Dark Kingdom host in this dimension was sealed, supposedly for eternity.
Eternity, Usagi was slowly becoming to realise, wasn't as long as it once was.
Oh, to a human from the Moon Kingdom, the normal human lifespan of seventy or eighty years was but an eyeblink - the Senshi would still be around in over a thousand years, and if they were unlucky, would look as if they were moving out of their twenties. It wasn't just the fact that they were Senshi that allowed such lifespans, either, but also spill-on effects from the Time Gate on Pluto.
Conceivably, it could sustain them until the sun swelled out huge in a few thousand million years. And possibly longer.
But a human wouldn't last as long.
Strangely enough, memory barely lasted as long as an average human from Earth.
Case in point, Usagi forgot it was a day for university. She told herself she'd have to tell Ami about this latest dream when she got out of bed later in the day, and rolled back under her blankets.
******
Ranma's eyes followed Hotaru's movements as she parried, thrust, kicked, blocked, blocked, parried and kicked again across the designated sparring zone. Rei's movements were getting good - years of practise at being a Shrine Maiden and learning some basic martial arts in the process paid off in spades for her.
Rei snapped out a kick, dropping the leg quickly, pivoted, and snapped out another. Ranma nodded. "Good Rei, good. But lean a little further back. You're committing yourself to moving forward with that posture, something that could be anticipated and -"
Rei made the same move, and caught a fist in the stomach as Hotaru ducked the kick and stood up under her as she brought her foot down forward of her other foot.
"- prepared for," Ranma finished, as he watched the wind go out of Rei's sails. "Match over!" He called a little louder. Hotaru completed the move she was in the middle of, dropping a foot onto Rei's toes. The older woman yelped and finished the process of folding up.
Ranma glared at her a little sternly. "Match over means match over, Hotaru."
She cocked her head to one side, almost cheekily. "Sorry, sempai." Ranma got the impression she wasn't all that apologetic. But he'd have words with her later.
"Baths and breakfast, people. Tomorrow I start us sparring in pairs." That brought a couple of groans, but Mitsuki looked a little thoughtful, and helped Rei to her feet.
"Come on," she said. "I think we should pair up. I mean, we've both got a good reason to pair up against a certain someone..."
Mitsuki's voice trailed off as she led Rei inside the dormitory's main building, heading for the hot springs out the back. Ranma stooped to start clearing up some of the weapons he'd crafted for combat sparring, stacking them in a neat pile to take them back to the small storage shed around the side of the dorm.
There wasn't a noise, but he felt someone looking at him. He looked up, feeling conscious suddenly of the weight on his chest and the way his girl form's breasts bounced energetically in his training gi. He didn't know why he was suddenly conscious of it; it was something he'd gotten used to a long time ago. But this felt... different.
Hotaru was staring at him from the doorway, head cocked to one side, shoulders raised to the other, her hips tilted slightly as well. One leg was a little forward from the other, and a hand crossed her chest, lightly touching the door frame with a soft caress. There was an enigmatic smile on her lips.
"Hotaru-chan?" Ranma asked, feeling a little more than self-conscious now. Something was definitely up, something felt wrong.
"Yes, sempai?" she replied, in a slightly teasing tone.
"Did you... want something?"
"Oh Sempai..." Hotaru breathed, then turned to head into the Ai Sou. Just before she entered, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "How long are you going to look like a girl, sempai? I want to do adult things with you." And then she was gone.
Leaving a very worried Ranma. This wasn't like her. Had that kiss done something to her yesterday? He'd already decided he was better off single. Perhaps that girl years ago had been correct in her statement, being with people, being near them, it hurt you more than was worth it. Perhaps he shouldn't have broken up with Akane, for that matter. He didn't need to hope for a happy marriage - he'd already known it wouldn't be happy, but simply okay punctuated with common bouts of violence directed at him.
Physical pain he could handle, at least. It was all this emotional stuff that sucked.
Natsumi Otohime, the one-time General of this evil Dark Kingdom type, she'd said it wasn't his fault. She wasn't herself at the moment, Hotaru was falling under the influence of someone for whom exuding sex appeal was like plants making oxygen - it just happened as a side effect of being alive.
That didn't make it any easier for Ranma to take. He was hurt. Very hurt.
******
Inside, Makoto gazed at Ranma from the kitchen window as he replaced all the training gear into the storage shed with a concerned eye. He looked... down. Dejected. Defeated. It wasn't a look she saw on him often, usually he had an aura of confidence around him. Even when losing a fight, she hadn't seen him look this much like someone had just killed his kitten.
Behind her, Ami tapped through the morning's emails on her laptop. She knew the morphological Mercury Computer hadn't been designed for quite this use, but it did the job perfectly - it was better than having a satellite network connection. There were a few from Keitaro, one of which was asking if she or any of her friends had seen one of his friend's little sister. She quickly typed in a reply while politely eating a small bowl of rice.
Two boxes resided on the floor, one black, one white. They had small eye holes in the front, and were facing where Usagi would normally be sitting.
"Really," said the black box, "You'd expect Usagi to be up by this time."
"Ahh, Luna," said the white box, "You also know Usagi. Any minute now, she'll come running downstairs, screaming about how sunspots made her alarm fail, making her sleep in."
"It won't be sunspots," Ami said, distracted. "That was last week's excuse."
Mitsuki yawned from her seat, covering her mouth with one hand while the other continued toweling her purple hair dry. "Some princess. Is it too late for me to vote someone else into the position?"
"Now, Sailor Nemesis, sleeping in occasionally is no excuse to tell her she can't be the Moon Princess any more," the black box commented.
"And you know how much she'd cry if she did get told that," the white box added drily.
"That's a point," Mitsuki conceeded.
"My question is: why do you have us in these rediculous boxes?" the black box asked.
Mitsuki sighed. "You really haven't seen Ranma when he, uh, sees cats. Not really. I'd prefer not to have a repeat of our date here."
"We've seen his reaction, and he was most restrained."
"I also don't want him marking his territory. It's, uh, most undignified."
Hotaru sauntered in, displaying more energy than she had in the time any already in the room had ever known she possessed. She was dressed in her school uniform already, grabbed a few things she'd prepared the night before for lunch that she'd left in the fridge, and prepared to head out. She caught the tail end of Mitsuki's comment. "Oh," she pouted, "I'd rather see that much more manly side to my sempai." She sauntered out of the room.
Silence.
"I think Hotaru's growing up," Makoto finally broke the silence, still gazing at the door.
The black box sighed. "I think it's more than a few hormones."
"It is," a girl said, a little sleepily, from the doorway.
Makoto, Mitsuki and Ami instantly recognised her. As did Rei, who'd stepped in from behind her. The young girl, the VR headset resting above her eyes, the stance... one of their latest and greatest foes.
"You!" Rei shrieked. "I gave a panty shot to a bunch of horny guys thanks to you!" She raised a hand to slap the younger girl, but then realised she couldn't feel the dark forces she associated with the enemy any longer from her. She paused, obviously still considering the blow, but the wind had been metaphorically taken out of her sails, and she was almost paralysed with indecision.
The girl turned, and looked up at her. "I... think I've got to be sorry. For something. But... I can't remember a lot about what's happened the last few months. Can... someone tell me?"
"You really don't remember?" Makoto asked, as Usagi pushed in the doorway behind Rei.
"Hey, Rei, quit hogging all the space! Some of us are late for class you ARGH!" she announced upon stumbling across Natsumi. "What's SHE doing here? I don't wanna be thrown into another... uh..." Usagi's brain caught up with the fact everyone else seemed to be in a light state of shock, but not overly alarmed. Subtly, she relaxed, but rounded on the girl. "What are you doing here? Are you planning to tell everyone -"
"Tell everyone what, Usagi?" Ranma asked from the doorway. He made his way across to the bench, and grabbed himself something to eat before turning to Natsumi. "Did you have a good sleep, Natsumi?"
"Yes, sempai," Natsumi answered, bowing her head slightly. "Uh... do you know why I'm here?" she asked, a little shyly, a little worried herself.
"You were possessed by an evil force that wanted to take over the world, and then you pissed off the wrong guy, he had you beaten up, and I rescued you from the gutter. Brought you back here, where you turned back into an unpossessed human." Ranma shrugged as he took a quick bite of rice. "Simple story, really."
"Do I know you?" Natsumi asked, stepping to one side from the door, keeping Rei in her sights. The red-haired girl seemed to know something, but Natsumi wasn't too sure about the whole possession story. "Why am I here?" she repeated.
Ranma shook his head as he found somewhere to sit while he virtually inhaled his rice. "Because I brought you here when you... uh... got beaten up by your former boss. He's, uh, not being a very nice person at the moment."
"Evil people never are," Makoto commented drily from one of the benches. "Ranma, you know who she is, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do," Ranma nodded. "She's Natsumi Otohime. Former Dark General. She -"
"How do you know about the Dark Generals?" Usagi demanded.
"Uh... cause I fight with Sailor Moon and her friends? How do you know?" Ranma also wanted to know.
"Uh... this isn't the time for that," Makoto interjected. Rei agreed.
"Can we stick to the facts here, please? Ranma, what *is* she doing here?"
"She'd been used and abused by her boss. So I brought her here." Ranma shrugged. "To recover. She was no threat."
"How do you know that?" Usagi exploded. "We've had... uh, my friends have had more experience dealing with Dark Kingdom creeps than you have, Ranma, we know what they're capable of!"
"Maybe so, but I know people, and I know people who are trying to hurt or kill my friends, Usagi. And Natsumi didn't feel like that at all."
Usagi exploded again, "So you threatened all our lives by bringing an enemy into our midst because of a HUNCH?"
"My hunches are better than your best exam guesses!" Ranma retorted heatedly. "And I'd even trust my guesses better than your most learned statements!"
Both Ranma and Usagi leant over the table, getting closer and closer to one another's faces, death in their eyes as the insults and bile ramped up quickly. Makoto grabbed Usagi and pulled her back, Rei did the same to Ranma, who gave Rei a weird glance as to where her hands slipped while pulling her back.
"Ow, Rei, do you have to be so rough?"
"That's enough, both of you!" Makoto scolded. "Usagi, stop being stupid. Ranma... knows what he's doing. I trust his judgment, Usagi, you should too. We all know him, we've all fought him, we trust him to watch our backs."
"Uh, excuse me," Natsumi piped up from the sidelines, "but isn't sempai a girl?" She squeezed certain bits of Ranma's anatomy to prove this was indeed the case. Ranma's mouth dropped open in shock. Rei looked a little jealous. "Yeah, these feel real. So why are you guys calling her a man?"
"It's a very long story," Ranma said, still glaring daggers at Usagi.
Usagi glared right back at him. "That still doesn't explain -" She cut herself off as Makoto's knuckles dug a little deeper into her back.
"Quiet, Usagi-chan," she warned quietly.
Ami continued tapping on her laptop oblivious to it all. Mitsuki smirked from one of the cupboards where she was leaning, opposite to Natsumi. She glanced over at the young girl.
"Oh, don't worry about them, they're always like this," she explained with a wave of her hand.
"Anyway," Ranma continued. "I brought her here to recover and rest, as she needed it and was no threat to us. That was two days ago. Yesterday, she came to me. We talked a bit more, and then she gave up this... dark energy that was within her, so she could keep on living."
"Once the Dark Kingdom gets its claws into you, you can't get free!"
"*Cough*Mamoru*cough*" said Rei.
"*Cough*Chibi-Usa*cough*" said Makoto.
"Hey, don't look at me, I don't know who the hell they're talking about," Mitsuki muttered. "Although that Mamoru was kinda cute... Oh but wait, Keitaro?"
Usagi's eyes slid around to her, daggers now redirected.
"Saved ya, lover boy," Mitsuki said, blowing a kiss at Ranma and sweeping from the kitchen. "Bye bye, boys and girls, I'm off to class."
silence reined, only broken by the sound of steam blowing from Usagi's ears. "That Mitsuki, she's getting too big for her boots!" Usagi stalked from the kitchen as well, gathering her bag from the doorway and leaving with murder in her eyes. Ami sighed, and folded her laptop closed.
"I'd best head to the university as well," she said quietly. "I've got a free period this morning, and I want to do some studying in the library."
"They're rebuilt it already?" Ranma asked, confused.
"No. It's a big university, there's a number of libraries," Ami said before waving and departing.
That left Rei, Makoto, Ranma and Natsumi. Now that the more hot-headed people had left, the tension in the room eased considerably.
"Ranma, was it really safe having her here?" Makoto asked quietly.
"Hey! I'm in the room here!" Natsumi spoke up.
Ranma gestured for her to come to the table. "Yeah. She's fine. She was fine, too. She... had her reasons for being what she was. I think she's learnt her lesson from it all now."
Natsumi shook her head. "I can't remember much at all. All I really know is I... had a dream. Where I was stronger than anyone. And didn't have to put up with anything, least of all bullies."
"You've got a second chance, Natsumi," Ranma said, quietly. "Don't waste it. If you want to change your life, if you want to change you, don't take the easy way, okay? Do it the hard way. You'll appreciate it better if you earn it yourself rather than cheating to get to the goal."
Natsumi nodded, digesting that.
"And now," Ranma said, standing, "I'd better get you home. I've... also got someone else to see this morning. And I want to make sure you're home safely before I go to... see her."
******
Mutsumi Otohime was very happy to see her younger sister again. The woman wrapped her arms around the girl and wouldn't let go, smothering Natsumi in her promenant breasts until the younger girl had to break free and gasp for a few moments to regain her breath. Mutsumi thanked Ranma for finding her sister, and Keitaro appeared from within the Hinata Sou's main building to say hi and see what all the commotion was about. He recognised Ranma's female body, and remembered something bad about Natsumi, but before he could say anything, a turtle with strap-on scramjets bounced off his skull, and he went down unconscious, while a girl with what looked to be African heritage chased after the turtle with a remote control.
Ranma left shortly after.
Now, in Nerima again. The last time he'd been here, he'd had trouble. Big trouble. He still wasn't sure what that powder Nabiki had blown at him was supposed to do; he guessed it was supposed to make him impotent or something. Considering the fact that everything seemed to be working fine he guessed whomever had given it to her - Cologne, most likely - had screwed her over. Sold her a bunch of magical beans.
He wandered up one of the streets, towards the school. He had business there, this he knew.
It was well past time he brought this to a close, he felt. Some things had to be ended. The whole Nerima routine was getting old. Could still cause a lot of trouble, if Nabiki ever got people to go around Kuno. And heck, if Kasumi ever decided to weigh in on Nabiki's side - and considering Nabiki and Akane were her baby sisters, that was likely - Ranma would end up facing all of Nerima's antisocial crowds of thugs and former friends.
He found himself at the school gates presently, and paused, unsure of whether he should enter or not. This wasn't neutral ground anymore, he had a feeling the last battle would still be fought here. Too much had happened on these grounds for him to feel comfortable there, now he was safe in his new life. Too much brought back memories.
But things had to be faced, brought to the surface.
Enough was enough.
He stepped inside. "I'm home," he murmured. The few students who were spread out about the front courtyard turned towards him casually, and fell silent, conversations drying up and people moving back towards walls and behind trees and other safe havens from the latest coming storm.
Ranma only had to wait a few minutes before the front doors slammed open and Nabiki stormed out. "I don't know how you twisted Kuno around, Ranma, but -"
Ranma held up a finger. "Shush, Nabiki. I'm not here for you." He nodded back at the doors. "I'm here for her."
Hotaru glared at him from a distance. "I did it for you," she pouted.
"I know. But it's time to end this. I can handle my fights by myself, Hotaru-chan."
"I'm not your Hotaru-chan anymore, Ranma."
"What's happened, Hotaru?" Ranma asked.
"She's been acting weird since some guy turned up this morning to talk to her," Nabiki muttered to Ranma, before realising who she was talking to. Then she turned away in disgust and stormed off again.
"What's happened, Ranma? I found someone else."
"So that's who Ranma dumped Akane for?" Ranma heard someone in the crowd say. "Wow, she's cute."
"He's not your type, Hotaru," Ranma warned.
"How would you know? What do you know about him?"
Ranma took a breath. "I know what he does to me, Hotaru. He makes me feel tingly when I look at him. My knees go weak when he looks at me. I find it hard to breathe when he's near me, I want to cry when he goes away." Hotaru's expression softened for a scant moment, but she pouted again fairly quickly. "I know what you're going through with him, Hotaru-chan, and you should know... it's not real."
"Of course it's real!" she shouted back at him.
"It's not real! He's not good for you!" How else do you yell the guy you're infatuated with is a Dark General? "He's a wolf in sheep's clothing! He's... he's worse than I used to be!"
Hotaru paused, then walked down to Ranma, standing right up close. She lifted a hand, stroked it along his jawline, gazing up into his eyes ever so gently, ever so softly, then closed her eyes and kissed him on the lips. Ranma returned the kiss, with passion, lowering his head when Hotaru stepped back from him.
"He's real to me, Ranma. And he kisses better. And he's not afraid to have sex with a sixteen year old."
The courtyard fell silent. Ranma's heart stopped beating, grew cold with ice.
And then grew warm and bubbly.
He turned, to see the blond-haired man standing at the gates, behind him. Smiling. The scent of roses wafted across the courtyard, and Ranma's heart swooned, but he fought back against the attraction, pushed it back into its box. "You can't have her," he said, more to break the sudden silence, prove to himself that Ranma hadn't gone deaf.
The man smiled again.
"He doesn't have to have me, Ranma," Hotaru breathed in his ear. She stepped lightly across to stand beside him. "Yoshihiro already has me, sempai. Body and soul. He gave himself to me this morning... in ways you can't give yourself to me, or just won't. I'm sorry, Ranma, but you lost... to the better man." She shrugged.
"You can't do this...!" Ranma pleaded. "Take me, instead. I mean nothing to the others!"
"That's why he's picked me," Hotaru smirked. "Thanks in part to you, he's down a general. Yoshihiro needs someone to take Natsumi's place. That someone will be me."
"What's she talking about, Ranma?" Nabiki asked, despite herself.
"He's an evil bastard trying to destroy the world, and she's one of the biggest guns in the universe," Ranma said, his stomach dropping into a deep pit of despair.
"You don't say."
"Doesn't your Master have anything to say for himself?"
"Someone as good as my Rose Prince has no need of words for the likes of you, Ranma." Hotary looked sarcastically apologetic. "I'm so very sorry. My heart is bleeding." She touched a hand to her chest in mock sympathy.
Ranma looked at the ground. "I've failed you, then. I tried to protect you. I didn't want you to -"
"To what?" Hotaru looked amused now. "Ranma, I don't need protecting. I don't need helping. I never did. I'm the strongest of the Bishoujo Senshi, the prettiest of the soldiers in sailor suits. I am become death, destroyer of worlds. I have destroyed such before, I will again. And if my Yoshihiro wishes it to be so, this world will be next."
The blond man looked down at Hotaru. She looked up, concerned, a little upset. "But you said I could play with him a little longer! Oh, alright." She thrust a hand high up in the air, reaching for the sky. "Saturn Dark Transformation - Make Up!" High-speed winds whipped up around the school, blowing over at least one tree Ranma could see. Hotaru's clothes ripped and tore off, into tiny shreds, which then reformed into her Saturn fuku. But the colours were all wrong. Where once royal purple resided, now only a dark matt black lurked. The style was slightly different, too. The skirt was cut shorter, higher on the hips. The join with the fuku itself was much more angular, sharp. small spikes adorned the shoulder guards, and her tiara was a bright, shining silver, with a black gem inlaid into the centre. her knee-high boots now also came higher up her thighs. The only thing seemingly unchanged was the Silence Glaive that she held in her hands.
"Sensei. You taught me well. You trained me, when I was pretending to be weak, to appeal to you. To make you interested in me. Well, now you get to see how well you trained me." Mistress Saturn cocked the Silence Glaive to a ready position as Yoshihiro stepped back from the pair. "Ranma Saotome: now you die!"
And what was formerly Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, now Mistress Saturn of the Dark Kingdom, leapt at Ranma, right through his unready defences.
TO BE CONTINUED...
SAILOR MOON SAYS:
Took a few days to write. This might seem a bit rushed in places... it's not, it's got everything that was supposed to be in it. With... something of a different ending. One thing about not writing so fast is that I've got a lot more time to think on the ramifications of certain actions. The end of this chapter is the result of some of that work.
Hopefully, the next chapter will be as exciting as its seeming to be in my head already...
Next time, on Love: The battle royale kicks off! Mistress Saturn versus Ranma! Who will win? Who will lose? Will good triumph over evil? Will we ever really know?
LOVE
By
Raymond Cooper
Chapter 6
** **
Above her, far in the distance, Nemesis was sling-shotted out of the physical reach of the Moon Kingdom. Serenity knew where the faint pin prick of light was, visible by the naked eye only because time and space in the Kingdom was not what it was outside of the Kingdom. The dot grew steadily dimmer, and the elder Guardian of the planet turned, horrified to her.
"Princess!" she howled, "How can your mother sacrifice a world of the Kingdom like that?"
Serenity was lost for words, unable to speak, knowing what would happen as soon as the planet left the life-bearing energies of the Kingdom.
"The same way the Queen could direct that comet to hit Mars," the senshi of Mars snarled. "Our worlds don't matter here anymore."
That's not true! Serenity wanted to say, to explain that her mother was sacrificing entire worlds to try to save what remained of the Kingdom. As civilisation grew on the planet Earth below, as the balance between nature and order was upset, so the balance between light and dark was being lost. And with that unbalancing, the Dark Kingdom, led by Beryl, made their push on the resource and energy rich homeworlds of the Moon Kingdom, entering that which they had been denied at the founding of the Kingdoms.
As Below, so Above.
Queen Serenity had at first tried to negotiate. When the Librariums had fallen to the depravities that had engulfed the Utopia University whole, the planet's administrative staff had been evacuated and bombarded with asteroidal matter from orbiting forge-satellites. While staffs had been removed from the planet by warp gates and evacuation transports and temporal corridors making microjumps across the system, the planet's population had been decimated.
Following the fall of Mercury, the Dark Kingdom Warhost attacked Mars, striking while the planetary defence fleets were hurriedly returning from Mercury. Zoicite, the Admiral of the Mercurian fleets, returned to find Mars' population held at ransom: the fleets to join the Dark Kingdom, else every man, woman and child on the planet would be slaughtered. Zoicite's loyalty to the Kingdom wavered for but a moment; he was an honourable man, and his duty, his loyalty, as was that of every member of the Kingdom, was to his King and Queen.
The King had paused in indecision. Queen Serenity didn't.
Zoicite was about to open fire on the enemy's encampments when, appearing via temporal corridor originating in the realSystem's Oort cloud, a mighty snowball, fully fifty kilometres across, sped past the orbiting ships. Dark Kingdom forces hurried to their own transport vessels as the snowball erupted in gas and dust, heated by the passage through the corridor and by the much nearer location to the sun, blew through the planet's atmosphere as if it didn't exist, and impacted in the planet. Nothing remained of the northern six hundred kilometres of the world, three kilometres of the crust had simply been shrugged off into space.
Half of the Warhost hadn't survived, but the surviving numbers were bolstered by Zoicite's defection in horror to the Dark Kingdom's Queen Beryl. The King had made a personal plea to Zoicite under a flag of truce, but the Admiral, in anger and misdirected hatred, struck the King to bring the pain he felt to Queen Serenity. The King had died in Martian orbit, and the war paused for a moment while both sides regrouped.
But then Venus fell, and Saturn, and Neptune, and Uranus. All that were left in the Moon Kingdom were the planets Jupiter, Pluto, Nemesis and the Moon itself.
And now, in the latest battle, Beryl's forces had set off a chain reaction of graviton bombs across the surface of Nemesis, thrusting the planet from its normal orbit and out into the cold depths of space.
Nemesis turned to the Princess, pain in her eyes, anger in her heart. "I can hear them, Princess, I can hear them dyi"
There wasn't even a snip of sound as the planet passed from the heart of the Kingdom. Once outside the barriers, the planet reverted to realSystem physical laws, and the inhabitants of Nemesis simply ceased to exist. This, of course, included the senshi of the planet. All that was left was a ball of energy, starting as the bright blue of the world Nemesis, fading to a dull grey, then black. The ball of energy hovered for a moment, then shot back into the palace, where Princess Serenity's mother would harness the energies of the fallen warrior for other purposes.
The guardians of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto now stood around the Princess. Mars was angry at the reason behind the loss of her homeworld, and only the fact that the Princess, the girl who she was assigned to protect, was just as horrified as the other Guardians.
Well, most. Pluto and Saturn took different views on such things, preferring more to cut out the heart of a living creature to save it from cancers in the extremities. Saturn herself had been responsible for the destruction of Venus when the Venusian fleets had defected also in response to Zoicite's passionate speeches on the horrors the Moon Kingdom's Queen was committing to keep her ever more fragile grip on power, her need to stay in control of everything. The Martian and Jovian fleets had soon followed.
While the Neptunian and Uranian fleets still fought for the Kingdom, they were being beaten back on all fronts, day in, day out. The future looked bleak, and while the Queen claimed victory would be theirs, even the everyday population of the Moon Kingdom was beginning to realise that something was wrong, there were too many communication blockages, too many disruptions to everyday services, too many incomplete news reports.
Endymion stood off to one side of the group, watching up into the skies, at the planet he had been named protector of. Earth cast a bluish light over the green lunar landscapes, and over everyone. It was full this morning, shining the brightest it did in the lunar dinurnal cycle. Behind him stood Luna and Artemis, the advisors to Serenity.
And then, as the bodyguards and their Princess stood, mostly quiet apart from Mars' angry accusations, Endymion noticed something in the sky. He looked back to his bethrothed, and then to Luna. "It comes," he said, quietly.
Luna nodded. "The Queen felt the breakthrough would come this morning."
"Too few ships remain in the fleet to protect the Moon's protective shell," Artemis agreed.
"What?" asked the Princess, distracted from the tirade. The calm statements even made Mars pause and look up.
Saturn sighed. "It is time."
"Not yet, please, Saturn," Luna begged. "Give us another few minutes! You know the Queen could be wrong, you know we might yet triumph here! What if you took to the skies in our defence?"
"Then if I fell, so would the Kingdom," Saturn said, before rising up into the skies, whirling the Silence Glaive in her hands. The Senshi looked to one another.
"What will happen now?" Serenity asked Luna, before the growing roaring noise from above drowned out her voice. She barely noticed Pluto gating out to her planet's command centre, as planned.
"Your mother will use the energy of the destruction of the Kingdom to seal the Dark Kingdom forces back in their realm, where they belong," Luna said. "Pluto will ride out the destruction of the Kingdom, and rebuild when it is possible, using the people on the planet Earth. And you... all of you Senshi... will be reborn on Earth. Given new lives, It will be your destiny to resurrect the Moon Kingdom, and rule over the solar system in the name of Light."
But by this time, there was too much noise. Nothing could be heard, even the glaive's sound was blanked by the noise it was creating. The light pouring from the glaive grew steadily, as did the light from approaching star ships.
And then, for a scant moment, time stopped. Serenity saw the Senshi around her, eyes lowered, forms kneeling in fealty, Endymion's eyes locked on hers, his lips mouthing the words "I will find you," before it all disappeared in white...
******
Usagi woke up holding her head. Three dreams in as many days. Possibly of historic content, great moments in the life of the Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom. Her early life, the beginnings of the war with the Dark Kingdom, and the end of the war.
After that final eternal moment, the barriers holding back realspace from the Kingdom were shattered, and the Moon Kingdom died, along with everyone existing in its boundaries. But at the same time, the Dark Kingdom host in this dimension was sealed, supposedly for eternity.
Eternity, Usagi was slowly becoming to realise, wasn't as long as it once was.
Oh, to a human from the Moon Kingdom, the normal human lifespan of seventy or eighty years was but an eyeblink - the Senshi would still be around in over a thousand years, and if they were unlucky, would look as if they were moving out of their twenties. It wasn't just the fact that they were Senshi that allowed such lifespans, either, but also spill-on effects from the Time Gate on Pluto.
Conceivably, it could sustain them until the sun swelled out huge in a few thousand million years. And possibly longer.
But a human wouldn't last as long.
Strangely enough, memory barely lasted as long as an average human from Earth.
Case in point, Usagi forgot it was a day for university. She told herself she'd have to tell Ami about this latest dream when she got out of bed later in the day, and rolled back under her blankets.
******
Ranma's eyes followed Hotaru's movements as she parried, thrust, kicked, blocked, blocked, parried and kicked again across the designated sparring zone. Rei's movements were getting good - years of practise at being a Shrine Maiden and learning some basic martial arts in the process paid off in spades for her.
Rei snapped out a kick, dropping the leg quickly, pivoted, and snapped out another. Ranma nodded. "Good Rei, good. But lean a little further back. You're committing yourself to moving forward with that posture, something that could be anticipated and -"
Rei made the same move, and caught a fist in the stomach as Hotaru ducked the kick and stood up under her as she brought her foot down forward of her other foot.
"- prepared for," Ranma finished, as he watched the wind go out of Rei's sails. "Match over!" He called a little louder. Hotaru completed the move she was in the middle of, dropping a foot onto Rei's toes. The older woman yelped and finished the process of folding up.
Ranma glared at her a little sternly. "Match over means match over, Hotaru."
She cocked her head to one side, almost cheekily. "Sorry, sempai." Ranma got the impression she wasn't all that apologetic. But he'd have words with her later.
"Baths and breakfast, people. Tomorrow I start us sparring in pairs." That brought a couple of groans, but Mitsuki looked a little thoughtful, and helped Rei to her feet.
"Come on," she said. "I think we should pair up. I mean, we've both got a good reason to pair up against a certain someone..."
Mitsuki's voice trailed off as she led Rei inside the dormitory's main building, heading for the hot springs out the back. Ranma stooped to start clearing up some of the weapons he'd crafted for combat sparring, stacking them in a neat pile to take them back to the small storage shed around the side of the dorm.
There wasn't a noise, but he felt someone looking at him. He looked up, feeling conscious suddenly of the weight on his chest and the way his girl form's breasts bounced energetically in his training gi. He didn't know why he was suddenly conscious of it; it was something he'd gotten used to a long time ago. But this felt... different.
Hotaru was staring at him from the doorway, head cocked to one side, shoulders raised to the other, her hips tilted slightly as well. One leg was a little forward from the other, and a hand crossed her chest, lightly touching the door frame with a soft caress. There was an enigmatic smile on her lips.
"Hotaru-chan?" Ranma asked, feeling a little more than self-conscious now. Something was definitely up, something felt wrong.
"Yes, sempai?" she replied, in a slightly teasing tone.
"Did you... want something?"
"Oh Sempai..." Hotaru breathed, then turned to head into the Ai Sou. Just before she entered, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "How long are you going to look like a girl, sempai? I want to do adult things with you." And then she was gone.
Leaving a very worried Ranma. This wasn't like her. Had that kiss done something to her yesterday? He'd already decided he was better off single. Perhaps that girl years ago had been correct in her statement, being with people, being near them, it hurt you more than was worth it. Perhaps he shouldn't have broken up with Akane, for that matter. He didn't need to hope for a happy marriage - he'd already known it wouldn't be happy, but simply okay punctuated with common bouts of violence directed at him.
Physical pain he could handle, at least. It was all this emotional stuff that sucked.
Natsumi Otohime, the one-time General of this evil Dark Kingdom type, she'd said it wasn't his fault. She wasn't herself at the moment, Hotaru was falling under the influence of someone for whom exuding sex appeal was like plants making oxygen - it just happened as a side effect of being alive.
That didn't make it any easier for Ranma to take. He was hurt. Very hurt.
******
Inside, Makoto gazed at Ranma from the kitchen window as he replaced all the training gear into the storage shed with a concerned eye. He looked... down. Dejected. Defeated. It wasn't a look she saw on him often, usually he had an aura of confidence around him. Even when losing a fight, she hadn't seen him look this much like someone had just killed his kitten.
Behind her, Ami tapped through the morning's emails on her laptop. She knew the morphological Mercury Computer hadn't been designed for quite this use, but it did the job perfectly - it was better than having a satellite network connection. There were a few from Keitaro, one of which was asking if she or any of her friends had seen one of his friend's little sister. She quickly typed in a reply while politely eating a small bowl of rice.
Two boxes resided on the floor, one black, one white. They had small eye holes in the front, and were facing where Usagi would normally be sitting.
"Really," said the black box, "You'd expect Usagi to be up by this time."
"Ahh, Luna," said the white box, "You also know Usagi. Any minute now, she'll come running downstairs, screaming about how sunspots made her alarm fail, making her sleep in."
"It won't be sunspots," Ami said, distracted. "That was last week's excuse."
Mitsuki yawned from her seat, covering her mouth with one hand while the other continued toweling her purple hair dry. "Some princess. Is it too late for me to vote someone else into the position?"
"Now, Sailor Nemesis, sleeping in occasionally is no excuse to tell her she can't be the Moon Princess any more," the black box commented.
"And you know how much she'd cry if she did get told that," the white box added drily.
"That's a point," Mitsuki conceeded.
"My question is: why do you have us in these rediculous boxes?" the black box asked.
Mitsuki sighed. "You really haven't seen Ranma when he, uh, sees cats. Not really. I'd prefer not to have a repeat of our date here."
"We've seen his reaction, and he was most restrained."
"I also don't want him marking his territory. It's, uh, most undignified."
Hotaru sauntered in, displaying more energy than she had in the time any already in the room had ever known she possessed. She was dressed in her school uniform already, grabbed a few things she'd prepared the night before for lunch that she'd left in the fridge, and prepared to head out. She caught the tail end of Mitsuki's comment. "Oh," she pouted, "I'd rather see that much more manly side to my sempai." She sauntered out of the room.
Silence.
"I think Hotaru's growing up," Makoto finally broke the silence, still gazing at the door.
The black box sighed. "I think it's more than a few hormones."
"It is," a girl said, a little sleepily, from the doorway.
Makoto, Mitsuki and Ami instantly recognised her. As did Rei, who'd stepped in from behind her. The young girl, the VR headset resting above her eyes, the stance... one of their latest and greatest foes.
"You!" Rei shrieked. "I gave a panty shot to a bunch of horny guys thanks to you!" She raised a hand to slap the younger girl, but then realised she couldn't feel the dark forces she associated with the enemy any longer from her. She paused, obviously still considering the blow, but the wind had been metaphorically taken out of her sails, and she was almost paralysed with indecision.
The girl turned, and looked up at her. "I... think I've got to be sorry. For something. But... I can't remember a lot about what's happened the last few months. Can... someone tell me?"
"You really don't remember?" Makoto asked, as Usagi pushed in the doorway behind Rei.
"Hey, Rei, quit hogging all the space! Some of us are late for class you ARGH!" she announced upon stumbling across Natsumi. "What's SHE doing here? I don't wanna be thrown into another... uh..." Usagi's brain caught up with the fact everyone else seemed to be in a light state of shock, but not overly alarmed. Subtly, she relaxed, but rounded on the girl. "What are you doing here? Are you planning to tell everyone -"
"Tell everyone what, Usagi?" Ranma asked from the doorway. He made his way across to the bench, and grabbed himself something to eat before turning to Natsumi. "Did you have a good sleep, Natsumi?"
"Yes, sempai," Natsumi answered, bowing her head slightly. "Uh... do you know why I'm here?" she asked, a little shyly, a little worried herself.
"You were possessed by an evil force that wanted to take over the world, and then you pissed off the wrong guy, he had you beaten up, and I rescued you from the gutter. Brought you back here, where you turned back into an unpossessed human." Ranma shrugged as he took a quick bite of rice. "Simple story, really."
"Do I know you?" Natsumi asked, stepping to one side from the door, keeping Rei in her sights. The red-haired girl seemed to know something, but Natsumi wasn't too sure about the whole possession story. "Why am I here?" she repeated.
Ranma shook his head as he found somewhere to sit while he virtually inhaled his rice. "Because I brought you here when you... uh... got beaten up by your former boss. He's, uh, not being a very nice person at the moment."
"Evil people never are," Makoto commented drily from one of the benches. "Ranma, you know who she is, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do," Ranma nodded. "She's Natsumi Otohime. Former Dark General. She -"
"How do you know about the Dark Generals?" Usagi demanded.
"Uh... cause I fight with Sailor Moon and her friends? How do you know?" Ranma also wanted to know.
"Uh... this isn't the time for that," Makoto interjected. Rei agreed.
"Can we stick to the facts here, please? Ranma, what *is* she doing here?"
"She'd been used and abused by her boss. So I brought her here." Ranma shrugged. "To recover. She was no threat."
"How do you know that?" Usagi exploded. "We've had... uh, my friends have had more experience dealing with Dark Kingdom creeps than you have, Ranma, we know what they're capable of!"
"Maybe so, but I know people, and I know people who are trying to hurt or kill my friends, Usagi. And Natsumi didn't feel like that at all."
Usagi exploded again, "So you threatened all our lives by bringing an enemy into our midst because of a HUNCH?"
"My hunches are better than your best exam guesses!" Ranma retorted heatedly. "And I'd even trust my guesses better than your most learned statements!"
Both Ranma and Usagi leant over the table, getting closer and closer to one another's faces, death in their eyes as the insults and bile ramped up quickly. Makoto grabbed Usagi and pulled her back, Rei did the same to Ranma, who gave Rei a weird glance as to where her hands slipped while pulling her back.
"Ow, Rei, do you have to be so rough?"
"That's enough, both of you!" Makoto scolded. "Usagi, stop being stupid. Ranma... knows what he's doing. I trust his judgment, Usagi, you should too. We all know him, we've all fought him, we trust him to watch our backs."
"Uh, excuse me," Natsumi piped up from the sidelines, "but isn't sempai a girl?" She squeezed certain bits of Ranma's anatomy to prove this was indeed the case. Ranma's mouth dropped open in shock. Rei looked a little jealous. "Yeah, these feel real. So why are you guys calling her a man?"
"It's a very long story," Ranma said, still glaring daggers at Usagi.
Usagi glared right back at him. "That still doesn't explain -" She cut herself off as Makoto's knuckles dug a little deeper into her back.
"Quiet, Usagi-chan," she warned quietly.
Ami continued tapping on her laptop oblivious to it all. Mitsuki smirked from one of the cupboards where she was leaning, opposite to Natsumi. She glanced over at the young girl.
"Oh, don't worry about them, they're always like this," she explained with a wave of her hand.
"Anyway," Ranma continued. "I brought her here to recover and rest, as she needed it and was no threat to us. That was two days ago. Yesterday, she came to me. We talked a bit more, and then she gave up this... dark energy that was within her, so she could keep on living."
"Once the Dark Kingdom gets its claws into you, you can't get free!"
"*Cough*Mamoru*cough*" said Rei.
"*Cough*Chibi-Usa*cough*" said Makoto.
"Hey, don't look at me, I don't know who the hell they're talking about," Mitsuki muttered. "Although that Mamoru was kinda cute... Oh but wait, Keitaro?"
Usagi's eyes slid around to her, daggers now redirected.
"Saved ya, lover boy," Mitsuki said, blowing a kiss at Ranma and sweeping from the kitchen. "Bye bye, boys and girls, I'm off to class."
silence reined, only broken by the sound of steam blowing from Usagi's ears. "That Mitsuki, she's getting too big for her boots!" Usagi stalked from the kitchen as well, gathering her bag from the doorway and leaving with murder in her eyes. Ami sighed, and folded her laptop closed.
"I'd best head to the university as well," she said quietly. "I've got a free period this morning, and I want to do some studying in the library."
"They're rebuilt it already?" Ranma asked, confused.
"No. It's a big university, there's a number of libraries," Ami said before waving and departing.
That left Rei, Makoto, Ranma and Natsumi. Now that the more hot-headed people had left, the tension in the room eased considerably.
"Ranma, was it really safe having her here?" Makoto asked quietly.
"Hey! I'm in the room here!" Natsumi spoke up.
Ranma gestured for her to come to the table. "Yeah. She's fine. She was fine, too. She... had her reasons for being what she was. I think she's learnt her lesson from it all now."
Natsumi shook her head. "I can't remember much at all. All I really know is I... had a dream. Where I was stronger than anyone. And didn't have to put up with anything, least of all bullies."
"You've got a second chance, Natsumi," Ranma said, quietly. "Don't waste it. If you want to change your life, if you want to change you, don't take the easy way, okay? Do it the hard way. You'll appreciate it better if you earn it yourself rather than cheating to get to the goal."
Natsumi nodded, digesting that.
"And now," Ranma said, standing, "I'd better get you home. I've... also got someone else to see this morning. And I want to make sure you're home safely before I go to... see her."
******
Mutsumi Otohime was very happy to see her younger sister again. The woman wrapped her arms around the girl and wouldn't let go, smothering Natsumi in her promenant breasts until the younger girl had to break free and gasp for a few moments to regain her breath. Mutsumi thanked Ranma for finding her sister, and Keitaro appeared from within the Hinata Sou's main building to say hi and see what all the commotion was about. He recognised Ranma's female body, and remembered something bad about Natsumi, but before he could say anything, a turtle with strap-on scramjets bounced off his skull, and he went down unconscious, while a girl with what looked to be African heritage chased after the turtle with a remote control.
Ranma left shortly after.
Now, in Nerima again. The last time he'd been here, he'd had trouble. Big trouble. He still wasn't sure what that powder Nabiki had blown at him was supposed to do; he guessed it was supposed to make him impotent or something. Considering the fact that everything seemed to be working fine he guessed whomever had given it to her - Cologne, most likely - had screwed her over. Sold her a bunch of magical beans.
He wandered up one of the streets, towards the school. He had business there, this he knew.
It was well past time he brought this to a close, he felt. Some things had to be ended. The whole Nerima routine was getting old. Could still cause a lot of trouble, if Nabiki ever got people to go around Kuno. And heck, if Kasumi ever decided to weigh in on Nabiki's side - and considering Nabiki and Akane were her baby sisters, that was likely - Ranma would end up facing all of Nerima's antisocial crowds of thugs and former friends.
He found himself at the school gates presently, and paused, unsure of whether he should enter or not. This wasn't neutral ground anymore, he had a feeling the last battle would still be fought here. Too much had happened on these grounds for him to feel comfortable there, now he was safe in his new life. Too much brought back memories.
But things had to be faced, brought to the surface.
Enough was enough.
He stepped inside. "I'm home," he murmured. The few students who were spread out about the front courtyard turned towards him casually, and fell silent, conversations drying up and people moving back towards walls and behind trees and other safe havens from the latest coming storm.
Ranma only had to wait a few minutes before the front doors slammed open and Nabiki stormed out. "I don't know how you twisted Kuno around, Ranma, but -"
Ranma held up a finger. "Shush, Nabiki. I'm not here for you." He nodded back at the doors. "I'm here for her."
Hotaru glared at him from a distance. "I did it for you," she pouted.
"I know. But it's time to end this. I can handle my fights by myself, Hotaru-chan."
"I'm not your Hotaru-chan anymore, Ranma."
"What's happened, Hotaru?" Ranma asked.
"She's been acting weird since some guy turned up this morning to talk to her," Nabiki muttered to Ranma, before realising who she was talking to. Then she turned away in disgust and stormed off again.
"What's happened, Ranma? I found someone else."
"So that's who Ranma dumped Akane for?" Ranma heard someone in the crowd say. "Wow, she's cute."
"He's not your type, Hotaru," Ranma warned.
"How would you know? What do you know about him?"
Ranma took a breath. "I know what he does to me, Hotaru. He makes me feel tingly when I look at him. My knees go weak when he looks at me. I find it hard to breathe when he's near me, I want to cry when he goes away." Hotaru's expression softened for a scant moment, but she pouted again fairly quickly. "I know what you're going through with him, Hotaru-chan, and you should know... it's not real."
"Of course it's real!" she shouted back at him.
"It's not real! He's not good for you!" How else do you yell the guy you're infatuated with is a Dark General? "He's a wolf in sheep's clothing! He's... he's worse than I used to be!"
Hotaru paused, then walked down to Ranma, standing right up close. She lifted a hand, stroked it along his jawline, gazing up into his eyes ever so gently, ever so softly, then closed her eyes and kissed him on the lips. Ranma returned the kiss, with passion, lowering his head when Hotaru stepped back from him.
"He's real to me, Ranma. And he kisses better. And he's not afraid to have sex with a sixteen year old."
The courtyard fell silent. Ranma's heart stopped beating, grew cold with ice.
And then grew warm and bubbly.
He turned, to see the blond-haired man standing at the gates, behind him. Smiling. The scent of roses wafted across the courtyard, and Ranma's heart swooned, but he fought back against the attraction, pushed it back into its box. "You can't have her," he said, more to break the sudden silence, prove to himself that Ranma hadn't gone deaf.
The man smiled again.
"He doesn't have to have me, Ranma," Hotaru breathed in his ear. She stepped lightly across to stand beside him. "Yoshihiro already has me, sempai. Body and soul. He gave himself to me this morning... in ways you can't give yourself to me, or just won't. I'm sorry, Ranma, but you lost... to the better man." She shrugged.
"You can't do this...!" Ranma pleaded. "Take me, instead. I mean nothing to the others!"
"That's why he's picked me," Hotaru smirked. "Thanks in part to you, he's down a general. Yoshihiro needs someone to take Natsumi's place. That someone will be me."
"What's she talking about, Ranma?" Nabiki asked, despite herself.
"He's an evil bastard trying to destroy the world, and she's one of the biggest guns in the universe," Ranma said, his stomach dropping into a deep pit of despair.
"You don't say."
"Doesn't your Master have anything to say for himself?"
"Someone as good as my Rose Prince has no need of words for the likes of you, Ranma." Hotary looked sarcastically apologetic. "I'm so very sorry. My heart is bleeding." She touched a hand to her chest in mock sympathy.
Ranma looked at the ground. "I've failed you, then. I tried to protect you. I didn't want you to -"
"To what?" Hotaru looked amused now. "Ranma, I don't need protecting. I don't need helping. I never did. I'm the strongest of the Bishoujo Senshi, the prettiest of the soldiers in sailor suits. I am become death, destroyer of worlds. I have destroyed such before, I will again. And if my Yoshihiro wishes it to be so, this world will be next."
The blond man looked down at Hotaru. She looked up, concerned, a little upset. "But you said I could play with him a little longer! Oh, alright." She thrust a hand high up in the air, reaching for the sky. "Saturn Dark Transformation - Make Up!" High-speed winds whipped up around the school, blowing over at least one tree Ranma could see. Hotaru's clothes ripped and tore off, into tiny shreds, which then reformed into her Saturn fuku. But the colours were all wrong. Where once royal purple resided, now only a dark matt black lurked. The style was slightly different, too. The skirt was cut shorter, higher on the hips. The join with the fuku itself was much more angular, sharp. small spikes adorned the shoulder guards, and her tiara was a bright, shining silver, with a black gem inlaid into the centre. her knee-high boots now also came higher up her thighs. The only thing seemingly unchanged was the Silence Glaive that she held in her hands.
"Sensei. You taught me well. You trained me, when I was pretending to be weak, to appeal to you. To make you interested in me. Well, now you get to see how well you trained me." Mistress Saturn cocked the Silence Glaive to a ready position as Yoshihiro stepped back from the pair. "Ranma Saotome: now you die!"
And what was formerly Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, now Mistress Saturn of the Dark Kingdom, leapt at Ranma, right through his unready defences.
TO BE CONTINUED...
SAILOR MOON SAYS:
Took a few days to write. This might seem a bit rushed in places... it's not, it's got everything that was supposed to be in it. With... something of a different ending. One thing about not writing so fast is that I've got a lot more time to think on the ramifications of certain actions. The end of this chapter is the result of some of that work.
Hopefully, the next chapter will be as exciting as its seeming to be in my head already...
Next time, on Love: The battle royale kicks off! Mistress Saturn versus Ranma! Who will win? Who will lose? Will good triumph over evil? Will we ever really know?