Chapter 5
Author's new notes: Long time no see. Life gets busy, and no matter how hard you try, sometimes you don't have time for the things you love. Anyway. I'm particularly fond of the way I tried to contrast Ranma and the other Sailor's skill. The image I was trying to achieve is that yes Ranma is a bad mother-shutyourmouth, but than again, having the power of a Sailor is nothing to scoff at either. For those of you who have never read, shudder in anticipation at the outcome of Ranma and Galaxia's meeting. For those of you who have, remember the feelings you had the first time, and glory in the nostalgia. I hope to get the next chapter out sooner.
Disclaimer: I didn't want to do it. They made me. Make them stop, please make them stop.
The sky is bright and cheerful. Sun pours through the school yard like a waterfall of gold. It's a great day out.
I sigh. With the way the last couple of days have gone, I don't really have high hopes for this one. If I can get through it without anyone dying, then I'll think of it as a good day. So far the morning has been a good morning. My classes have gone by quickly and quietly. I think the girls have picked up on my mood, because it was very quiet. Those weird looks the girl have been giving me were replaced by a type of look I'm more used to: worry.
Now it was lunch. In my right hand is a sub; my left, a sports drink. I feel that I need to relax after yesterday, to pull myself together a bit. If I had only been a little more focused yesterday I might have been in time...
If. I turn my thoughts away from that kind of thinking. It'll only get me down, turn me into old-school Ryoga.
I had decided that today I was going to enjoy my lunch in a private and peaceful fashion. Just me, my food, the sky, and the roof. Yup. I take a bite out of my sandwich and chew it slowly. Yup, just a quiet moment to..
"Well?" A loud voice intrudes on my serenity. I freeze. Two more girls have joined me on the roof, although they don't realize that I'm out here. I had been lying on the roof on the stairway, and that would make me just about un-seeable from their angle.
Should I move? Nah. I was here first, and I don't feel like moving. They're not doing anything wrong, so I can't kick 'em off. Oh well. Maybe they'll go away.
"But--! Why is nobody here!?" a new voice shouts. That sounds like that Aino girl.
"Well, lunch has just started," says the first voice, "so let's wait."
"Damnit," says Minako. "I'm hungry! What will I do without lunch? They better show up soon!"
"It would have been nice if I had picked Juuban High, too," says first-voice. "If I did that, I could live high school life together with all of you, but..."
"What?" Minako asks. "All of a sudden?"
"I was using the tarot cards this morning, and I drew this one..." There's a rustling noise, and I can hear Minako gasp. By now the two of them have my attention equally divided between them and my lunch. That takes a lot of skill on there part, considering the way I eat.
"I know," first-voice says. "This is not like our battles of before. There's no turning back..."
"Stop," says Minako. I hear her move again. "We promised that we would rescue those two. For us, it is always the same... Save our friends! Defeat the enemies! Protect those important to us! It's the same this time. They must be alive, and they will come home! Then we'll return to high school life! We'll get boyfriends! Those are the rules!" Defeat the enemy? Save our friends? Protect those important to us? My blood chills. Minako had been one of the blonds on the roof yesterday, when those other two girls were... The two now have my complete attention. Well, almost complete. I take another bite of my sandwich.
"That's right, boys!" continues Minako. "In junior high, too, we couldn't get along by ourselves! We didn't have time for that! So this time, we'll get hot sweethearts like the Three Lights! We'll work as hard as we can to get dates to go on, like ordinary high school girls! That's our ultimate dream! Nothing but that!"
"You're fooling yourself," a voice says. My eyes narrow. I recognize that voice.
"There is someone following their heart," says another one. "You have decided to live for that person." The Three Lights. Was this who the two girls had been waiting for? I finish my sandwich and take a sip of my sports drink (which is actually kind of difficult while you're lying down).
"You know...I guess that's it," says Minako. "You're right. There has always been just one person to whom we have devoted our lives..."
"Mina...!" says the other girl.
"That's right. We don't need boys. Is that wrong?" The two of them sound different then how they had sounded earlier. I'm suddenly very envious of whoever had those two as friends.
I wish I had had friends like that when I was their age.
"No," says one of the Lights, the same one as earlier.
"We are the true sailor soldiers!!" says the girl I don't recognize. "So, who are you!?"
"Well," Three Lights says, "what if we were impostors?"
"That would make you our enemies!!" says Minako. "We defeat our enemies!! Venus Crystal Power!"
"Mars Crystal Power!"
"Make Up!!"
A swirl of power starts to form a little way from me on the roof. I recognize it. It was like the one yesterday that I had felt before I had gone to investigate.
"We don't intend to pick fights indiscriminately!" the two girls say. "We just want to know who you really are. If you have sailor soldier names, transform right here and show us! Come on, now!"
The Three Lights rustle a bit, and then they shout:
"Healer Star Power!"
"Fighter Star Power!"
"Maker Star Power!"
"Make Up!!"
I can just make out a flash of light from my position, and a power almost identical to the power that the two girls had put out pushes against my senses.
"I can feel it..." the one that had called herself Mars says. "The power of stars. There's no mistaking it, those are crystals with star power! There's no mistaking it, it's the same sailor make up as our crystal powers!"
So. The Three Lights were the same as the good guys. I guess that makes them good guys too.
"We, and the enemy sailor soldiers," says one of them. "We are not just impostors, sailor soldiers in name only."
"But!" says Minako. "If you're real sailor soldiers...!"
"Sailor Mars," says the same Light. "The card after Death!"
There's a rush of noise, and a flare of that power again, the power of the sailor crystals I think they called it, and than I can tell the Three Lights are gone.
So. I'd been chasing the good guys. If I'm going to get to the bottom of things, I'm going to have to chase the bad guys for a bit now. Without letting the two girls still on the roof know that I was hiding the entire time, I leap from the roof of the school, to the ground below.
Twenty minutes later, during the first of my afternoon classes, I feel something. A chill rushes through me, and I feel the power of two sailor crystals flare, and then falter, and then vanish.
I think the day has just become a bad one. A very bad one for the two girls I had eavesdropped on the roof.
---
The sun against the back of my eyelids is what woke me up from my trance. My eyes dart open instantly, and then I relax a bit. I get up from my lotus position in the center of the gymnasium. I had been there most of the night, in the same position, but I'm neither sore nor stiff. I had spent the entire night in a meditative trance. Now I'm fully rested, and alert.
I grin and then launch myself into a series of kicks so fast that my image behind me blurs and stretches out. I've rarely ever felt this fast or powerful. Almost cheerfully I concentrate my energies, and form them into a powerful, yet condensed, ball of glowing blue chi in my hands. A twist of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I'm instantly in a combat position, the chi ready to be launched.
Flutter, flutter, flutter.
I relax in spite of myself. Well, well, well. My little friend, the other thing that lives in the gymnasium with me, the moth. Looks like its up and ready to go as well. I settle out of my ready position, and hold both of my hands directly in front of me, the glowing blue of the chi balanced and hovering there. The moth fluttered nearer to me, dancing through the air like a drunken dervish. I smile as it circles the orb once, and then flutters near my face. It flops through the air near my nose, and with a sudden 'plop' it lands on it.
I grin as I stare eye to eye with the insect. It's not nearly so ugly if you're not waking up to it.
"Ready to go, killer?" I ask it in a whisper.
The insect leaps from my nose, pulls a 180, and drives itself directly into the orb of chi in my hand. It is immolated instantly.
Suddenly, I don't feel like smiling anymore.
---
RINGGG.
Well, there it is. The last bell of the day. My class tries its level best to trample themselves as they crowd around the door of the gym. Everyone, no matter how good the student, loves the last bell of the day. I nod calmly to the to the last couple of girls, who had paused at the door to flutter their eyelids at me. Hmmm. They should change their contacts, or have a doctor look at them. Maybe they have pink eye.
When the last of the school girls have finally gone, that's when I get prepared. Back in my office I pull my locker open and pull out my pack. Opening one of my drawers, I put a letter on the top of my desk.
It's time to do some serious work. I've been forced on to a defensive position for the last couple of battles, mainly because I had no idea what was going on. Now that I've gotten a fairly good idea of the lay of the land, it's time I tried to take the offense.
To that end, I'm taking all of my things with me on my scouting trips. The letter I left on my desk is to let them know that I had quit for personal reasons, and sorry about that. If I don't find anything on my scouting, I'll get back here tomorrow and put it back in the drawer. See, I did all this junk so that if I'm forced to take a chance, like stow away on a ship or something, and I can't come back they'll know that I quit and I'll have all my stuff. I don't want to end up stranded in the middle of the Sierra without any supplies (Not again anyway).
Now all I have to do is find something. The Three Lights have a way of being where the action is. So did that Aino girl, but she's...Well, I can't follow her anymore. I leave my office quietly, and take quick steps so I can get out of the school without anyone knowing. As soon as I'm out I'll track down the lights and then...
I'll freeze, take a deep breath, and head to the roof where I can feel another set of powerful energies from sailor crystals forming.
Yet again with those odd coincidences that make up my life. It's about as strange as when Nabiki foreswore material wealth and joined a convent. Oh well, never waste an opportunity. I pull out my handkerchief, and with a swish and a whisper, I am once more wrapped in the Iron Cloth Shooting Star technique.
I take the stairs up to the roof quickly, but utterly quiet (no mean feet when you're wearing steel toed boots) and once there I crack open the door to the roof quietly to take stock of the situation. A confrontation of some sort. I can't see much through the crack in the door, only one girl, but I can hear at least three more up there. I focus on the one girl I can make out, and start to sweat.
The outfit the girl was wearing reminds me of something Kodachi would like to wear: black, tight, and leather. A tight leather mask is over her head, hiding her face from view. The mask is tipped with two vaguely earlike protrusions, and from the bumps hang two long braids of hair.
I shudder at the overall image. It makes me think of... one of those things. Those horrible, terrible, and evil creatures...
Cats.
Even as I shudder again, the girl is screaming something. "When I win this fight, I'll be able to take off this armlets, and have my old body back. Than the Lady Galaxia will give me a sailor crystal, and a planet of my own, and I'll be a scout!" The girl leaps into the air, and I allow the door to drift open more. I have to do this slow so that no one will notice a door opening without anyone there to help it. The battle is out of my sight now, but I can still make out a bit of the action with my ears.
"No, wait! You're all from the same planet!" a voice cries out, and then a scream. I start to open the door a bit faster. That had sounded like another kid. When the door is cracked enough for me to get through, I move quick. The black leather girl has been backed up a bit by another. A...
A blond with two strange ponytails. Her again.
"Stop," the blond pleads. "Open your eyes Nyanko!"
The black leather girl, Nyanko I guess, blurs her image sideways, and launches an attack past the blond. It whips by me, and I turn to follow its trajectory, and see it impact a strangely dressed couple, transforming them into...
...transforming them into evil four legged ferocious monsters from the deepest pit of hell. (Author's note: The previous statement has been uttered in Ranmanese. A rough translation of the above phrase would be 'cats'.)
I freeze up, taking bigger and bigger gulps of air as I desperately try to keep myself from screaming. In stead I start to edge away slowly. Real slow. Just take it slow.
Behind me a voice breaks in on the fight I'm now pretty much ignoring. I hear it just barely, kind of like I'm in glass bowl and the voices are coming from outside of the bowl. "Stupid, diving into it yourself.
One of the..the...the things move, and that does it. I turn to run, and slam face first into someone.
Once more, from outside of the glass bowl, a voice intrudes. "Star Serious Laser!"
I just barely have time to realize that I currently have my face pressed right in between the breasts of that Nyanko chick, when a sudden flash of her power courses through me, and we both disappear just as the laser is about to hit.
---
"WHAT THE HELL IS TOUCHING MY BREASTS?!?!" a voice screeches in my ear and, while temporarily deafening me, brings me back to my senses. Unfortunately, due to a combination of my recent escape from those demons back there and the shock of having me eardrums blasted, I lose control of my self defense technique. I regain visibility, with my face pressed right between the breasts of an enraged sailor scout with immense destructive powers.
"Um," I say, the words muffled by my position, "Sorry?" I jump back in time to avoid the explosion that Nyanko girl launches at me.
"DIE!!! Meow!" she screeched at me. I shudder a bit. It's not like I've never been yelled at before, its just that little bit she tagged onto the end, that meow bit, that shook me up. And so the fight began.
Now, while Aluminum Siren was tough and semi-fast and semi-skilled, this Nyanko chick is just plane fast. I've had to fight that blurring after-image technique before, but every other time it was caused by a trick of chi manipulation. When Nyanko did it, it was just because she was so fast. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I'm losing. I fought plenty of people faster than me, like that Kirin guy that led the Seven Lucky Gods of martial arts. My skill more than made up for the speed the girl had. However, she was moving so fast that I couldn't get a solid target on those bracers she was wearing.
While Nyanko screams battle cries and tried to decapitate me in the most gruesome way possible, I kept off her attacks and studied our surroundings. When I caught sight of them, I slipped, and Nyanko managed to land a couple dozen blows on me. That hurt, but I quickly reasserted my skill, and fended her off, even as what I saw before me sank in.
A field stretched out before me. Looking at it was weird. It looked like it stretched out forever, it just felt that way, but I could plainly make out where it met ends with a graveyard to my right. Dotting this field were little growths of strange things, crystalline in nature that sprouted out from the ground. There were hundreds of them, stretching out into that weird limited infinity, all in various stages of development. And in the center of that field, a palace stretched upwards, a palace topped by a huge crystal. It was a place I've never seen before, but a place I knew anyways.
Zero Star of Sagittarius.
Nyanko brakes off her physical attack on me, leaping back a dozen meters of so. "Meow! Eat this!" A ball of energy like the one she had been throwing on the roof formed in her hands, and she launched it at me. I flipped easily out of the way, before returning with one of my own.
"Fierce Tiger Domineering!" I cry, launching my blue ball of confidence at her. Her eyes widen, and she tries to dodge my attack. She doesn't quite make it, and it clips her arm, sending her spinning. My attack, not fully used up by the small contact it had with the girl, continues onwards a bit before detonating.
We stood, and stared at each other, her panting hard and me calming my slightly raised heart rate. I saw a glitter a fear in her eyes, as she realized something. I'm better than her. She maybe good, but I'm better. Seeing that she realizes this, my confidence only grows. The rest of this is going to be an easy...
"Our Garden!!" two voices scream out in unison. Nyanko's eyes widen, and then narrow in glee.
I turn to look at the two newcomers. They had dark hair and tight fitting evening gowns. They could have been twins. The only way to tell the two apart was the color of their dresses. I look around further, and grow a sweat drop. The two blasts that me and Nyanko had traded hadn't stopped at us. They had apparently plowed on, and now shards of crystals lay shattered everywhere, proof of our fight.
I turn my attention back to the two new women, and sweat drop further. They were both glaring at me, and if looks could kill I would be skinned, de-boned, de-sanguinated, and chopped into mincemeat by now.
"We are," the two begin as one,
"Sailor Phi," one shouts,
"Sailor Chi," the other finishes.
As one they continue. "We are the guardians of the Star Garden. For harming our harvest, prepare to die!"
"Meow!" declares Nyanko.
"Oh, boy," I mutter as all three close in on me, shuddering a bit at the last bit by Nyanko. I wish she would stop that. It freaks me out.
The following fight was not pretty. Phi and Chi were TOUGH. They were faster, stronger, and more skilled than me. The only thing they didn't have better than me was ingenuity. And man did I make use of that. In the brawl that follows, I design five new uses for the Rising Dragon Ascension Blast and three previously never before thought up variations on the Plucking Chestnuts From An Open Fire Fist. If the Star Gardeners had been pissed off before, you should see them now. If I could just keep the two from realizing I was leading them into a spiral their heat would make a Rising Dragon Ascension Blast that could blast everything in a two mile radius.
The battle slowed for a moment, after about five minutes of intense struggle. Most people would think that five minutes isn't a long time, and most people are idiots. In a real fight, were the two battlers are really trying to hurt each other, a fight is usually over a minute, maybe less. The fact that the four of us were still going was proof of our mutual skills. Well, Phi, Chi, and my skills anyway. Nyanko was still in because I had been concentrating on the two real fighters, and couldn't spare the energy it would take to knock her bracelet off.
I hadn't lost, but it really didn't look like I was going to win this fight. The only reason I'm still alive is because even though Phi and Chi are better than me, they don't have to prove it as often as me. They kept trying to separate and launch projectiles. I would just stick to one of them and use that to keep the others from shooting multicolored death. It worked, kind of. They had bruises and wounds as well, but I had more.
"Meow!" Nyanko declared, rubbing her shoulder. "I think we almost got him. Should we kill him here and now, or give him to Galaxia? She might like this one. Meow!"
Alright, that does it. I'm getting pissed. Not only is she sure that they're going to win, but she keeps saying that word. I shout at her, "Will you quit saying that!?"
Phi and Chi's eyes narrow, as Nyanko blink blinks. "Saying what? Meow?" I flinch without meaning too, and Phi and Chi begin to grin evilly. Uh-oh. I hope they don't realize...
"Tin Nyanko," the command as one. "Use your other form."
"You mean a cat? Why should I turn into a cat in the middle of a fight?" She must have noticed the way I flinched at every mention of that word. She also starts to grin viciously. And a second later, I'm confronted by one of those... things.
"AAUUGGHHH!" I screech, my body freezing up. The slathering demon takes a step towards me, and I start to shake.
"Meow," it says.
And that does it. I freeze up and begin to shake.
Phi and Chi grin at me, assuming they have won. They don't realize the half of it.
I slip into the Cat Fist.
---
There are two ways of getting out of the cat fist. One is getting hit by triggering my curse. That's the psychological equivalent of being woken up from sleep by getting smashed with a two by four. I mean, one second the poor cat brain is one gender, the next, bam, the cat is like 'I'm a boy, no I'm a girl. What the hell? I'm not even a cat!' and then consciousness returns. The other way of getting out of it is falling asleep on a quiet human. Now, I've heard that crap about only being able to be woke up by the one you love, and its just that. Crap. Genma made it up in an attempt to get me to marry Akane. The truth is I could wake up on the lap of Ryoga, as long as he sat still and shut up. I mean a perfect stranger, an old woman, woke me up the first time. I've never met her before, never saw her again, and most definitely wasn't head over heel in love with her.
This time, I wake up because I was able to sleep the cat fist off. No one triggered my curse. Waking up from the cat fist comes in phases. The first phase of my waking, is getting back into my human frame of mind while I'm asleep. That's when most of the memories of the cat fist are blocked off. I mean, who would want to remember running around on all fours and cleaning themselves with their tongue? The next phase is me being conscious, and all my surroundings kind of drifting in on me. I'm aware that I'm in someone's lap, and being petted right behind my ear, and I fuzzily collect that the person petting me is tall with long blond hair and in a flowing dress. The both of us are on a large and soft bed, her sitting on it, me sitting on her. It's really nice, and I shove my head against her hands as she pets me. Then the last phase kicks in. Being able to put memories to the images.
"Hello, Galaxia," I whisper, strangely unwilling to move from the warm and comfortable lap I'm in.
"Ranma," she greets me, a small smile on her face. "I've been looking for you."
Authors note: now, be honest. How many of you saw that coming?