Eternal City Crystal Tokyo
Chapter 71
"I'm going to KILL my publicist," Jun Fudou, often called Devilman Lady, growled as the attractive woman lounged on her couch.
Nadesico Kinomoto, her girlfriend, was also on the couch, laying beside her. "As she's probably my employee, I'd rather you didn't," she teased.
Jun snorted softly.
Jun had mentioned to a staffer she usually worked with that she and Nadesico were planning on getting married. Her INTENT had been to just make sure her schedule was going to be cleared. Then the next day it was on the NEWS.
"I will scold Sophie, if you want," Nadesico added, referring to the young lady who was one of her junior staffers.
Jun sighed, "NO, it's fine. I didn't explain what I was thinking to her..."
"Oh good. She can stop hiding from you," Nadesico teased.
"I'm not THAT scary," Jun pouted.
Nadesico just gave her a look.
"Meanie," Jun sighed.
Nadesico giggled, then sipped some of her tea.
"Are your parents still annoyed at us for that?" Jun asked mildly.
"They're mostly over that," Nadesico noted.
Sakura and Tomoyo had been a bit upset to first hear about the wedding plans via the news. They called Nadesico immediately, and the whole situation was made worse by Nadesico being caught by surprise too. So generally a fun time was had by all...
"They DO want to get involved with the wedding, when we do it," Nadesico noted.
"How big of a event are we talking about here...?" Jun wondered, sort of dreading it.
Nadesico just shrugged helplessly, both of them exchanging a slightly pained look. "Knowing Tomoyo? Very." she said.
"... maybe we could just elope," Jun sighed.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Maybe we could just elope?" Usagi suggested to Hotaru as they met with royal assistants to start readying for the royal wedding.
"You can NOT!" Makoto Kino, Lady Jupiter noted. "Both your parents would have a cow," she added flatly.
"I haven't heard anyone use that phrase in years," Hotaru teased.
"You know what I mean," Makoto waved that off.
Any wedding was months away, but the preperations had already started. The wedding of the Princess of Earth and one of the Sailor Soldiers was going to be huge. Add in the staggering guest list for the public side of the event, and we had an organizational nightmare.
"We'll need to divide up the jobs," Usagi noted.
"I'll take catering," Makoto noted wryly.
"I'm sure everything will be delicious," Hotaru agreed. "Please tell me you'll just supervise and not cook it all yourself."
"Even I'm not crazy enough to cook THAT much food," Makoto laughed. "I'll get help," she promised them.
"Who gets to manage the guest list?" Usagi wondered.
"It's MOSTLY going to be a diplomatic thing, other than our nearest and dearest," Hotaru noted thoughtfully.
"Venus," all three women chorused.
In her office, Minako Aino aka Venus sneezed loudly.
"Someone talking about you?" Motoko Kusanagi, her assistant and lover asked, the combat cyborg looking at her curiously.
"If it WAS that, I'd be sneezing all the time," Minako chuckled softly. She pouted, "I'm kind of annoyed I haven't gotten an invitation to Jun's wedding."
Motoko looked at her blankly for a moment. "But she doesn't even LIKE you," she pointed out to her reasonably.
"But I'm GREAT at weddings," Minako pouted.
Motoko rolled her eyes. "Speaking of weddings...," she continued.
"Usagi and Hotaru's," Minako nodded.
"You do realize we're going to have to go over the guest list. And it's going to be insane," Motoko pointed out.
"Gods yes," Minako sighed. "There's the local powers, like the Goddesses. The Knight Sabers. Archmage Sakura. Utena and the Generals. The Starlights and their Princess."
"Jurai," Motoko ticked off, "The Knanite. MANY planets from the League."
"And the interdimensional powers like Midchilde, the new Belka Republic and Sorcerer Kingdom," Minako added.
"And we'll have to check all of them over, security-wise," Motoko teased.
"Ugh." Minako groaned. She looked off in the distance, "Do you think any of the enemies will try anything?"
"I don't know," Motoko admitted. "There are planets in the League, not just Mesa, that would like to see us taken down a peg."
"And the Jurai faction that wants to take over the universe," Minako added, sighing.
"Maybe we can convince them to elope," Motoko suggested jokingly.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Think they'll elope?" Erika Tenoh wondered as the sandy blond sat in class.
"Of COURSE they won't," Catrine protested, her blue haired girlfriend looking amused.
"Who? The Princess or the Devil Lady?" Alicia asked, both having been in the news lately.
"BOTH!" Erika laughed.
"Just ignore her," Subaru noted wryly.
Their class was doing math that hour. Well, the rest of the CLASS was. Alicia and Subaru were both working on advanced calculus, as the mental work with their devices put them far ahead of the rest of them.
"Can you do my homework?" Catrine teased Alicia.
"No," Alicia deadpanned.
"Catrine, bring the latest problem up on holo-display and solve it," the teacher ordered, instantly ending the fooling around.
"Busted," Subaru teased.
Thankfully as a hardsuit trainee she was actually very good at maths, and handled the problem easily. They ran through several other puzzles, then moved on.
"All right, social studies. Today we'll be looking at our dimensional neighbors," Hikari Yamada smiled warmly. "Obviously you all know about Mid," she nodded to Alicia, "we'll be covering several other known realms, as well as some dimensional theory."
They ran through some basic theory first. Alternate timelines, dimensions, and the differences between them. Then a diagram of several related universes that Crystal Tokyo was in contact with.
"Mira," Hikari nodded to one girl, "tell us about the Sorcerer Kingdom."
Mira Grant nodded respectfully, "Right." She took a breath, "The Kingdom is a universe with magic, which resembles the 16th century of Earth, originally. It was invaded by a force known as 'Nazarik' which eventually conquored that planet, eventually leading it to becoming a mystical powered civilization."
"What's our relationship with them?" Hikari quizzed.
"Peaceful but not close," Mira said. Thoughfully she added, "As I understand it, their leader Ainz is... sociopathic, basically."
"Well, he IS a skeleton," Erika noted.
"A Overlord Lich, actually," Hikari corrected.
They discussed several other alternates Crystal Tokyo had contact with, including one where Jurai lead by Ryouko conquored known space, a universe lead by Eternal Sailor Mercury, the Haruhi-verse, and several others.
"So, why no inter-dimensional invasions?" Hikari asked generally.
"It's logistically very difficult," Alicia answered promptly. "Via magic or science, it takes a huge amount of energy to transport large masses. Attempting a war would be... well, very very hard for limited gains," she added.
To be continued...
Notes: Yes, I used the 'Elope' thing as a running gag.
Basically, this chapter sets up the idea that EVERY story I've written is part of a larger 'multiverse.' Mind you, it's already sort of canon with Arisugawa's Locket. But just spelling it out here.
At SOME point I also want to do an actual Overlord crossover. Will get done eventually.
