Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Obscured Lightning ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Obscured Lightning

By Rosy the Cat

Summary: A multi-crossover fan fiction, this story's main focus will be
on Sailor Jupiter of Sailor Moon fame, and will gain elements and characters
from Phantom of the Opera, Ranma 1/2, Hercules, and Xena. What if the Silver
Millenium's fall was not as quick or complete as we are shown in the series?
What if something went wrong with the Senshi's resurrection after D Point?

Disclaimer: I do not own Phantom of the Opera, Ranma 1/2, Hercules the
Legendary Journeys, Xena Warrior Princess, or Sailor Moon. I, furthermore,
do not own Master Koga of the Unseen Light. He belongs to Animeaddiction,
a.k.a. Hung Nguyen, who is a really-really-really good writer, and I bow
to his superior skills. Go read his stuff after you finish reading mine;
I COMMAND YOU!

Chapter Two

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ A year after the fall of Atlantian civilization, Athens ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The weighty iron-bound wooden door to the villa’s outer courtyard slammed
shut with a resounding crash, causing the inhabitants to look up in confusion
that was quickly cleared and replaced with barely-concealed mirth. War
Mage Thundara, known by the locals as Andrea, had returned from the local
market in a raging fit of temper.

It was getting to the point where it would be unusual if she didn’t.

“Someone *please* tell me that I’ve merely wandered back from an alternate
universe, and there is no way any human could be so chauvinistic as those
men outside!”

Carnelian, a native Terran Atlantian and of common birth, though a lady by
merit of her own virtues and skills on the field of battle, gave her friend
a wan smile. The abrupt change from living in a largely matriarchal society
where the talents and skills of both genders were viewed as equally valuable
and important, and government was more open, to a feudal mish-mash of city-
states led by warlords and kings and everything was of a distinct masculine-
favored bent, had been hard on all of those who had survived the Fall.

“Sorry ‘Dara, no luck there. And the fact that you’re obviously not a local
probably just makes them weirder.”

An exasperated sigh blown upward into her bangs--extra-curly due to humidity--
Thundara slumped back against the nearest stone wall and slid down until her
butt hit the dirt floor of the courtyard.

“That’s it; I’m moving to Sparta!”

Little Leeta, Prince Endymion’s fourth cousin on his father’s side and, at
the tender age of nine, the youngest of their group, looked up from the map
and mixed dried herbs in front of her. She was using the tools to divine
the location of a pack of demonic hellhounds that had been terrorizing the
local farmers, and some of the group was planning on going out to vanquish
them tonight, if they could pin down whatever cave or abandoned house had
been taken for a lair. She had survived the Fall by virtue that her parents
had not permitted her to go to the grand ball on the Moon with them, and had
instead left her with servants. That, and she knew her family’s ancestral
home better than the Dark Monsters, and had secreted herself away in a hidden
passage earlier that night in order to avoid having to take a bath. She never
left the sanctuary of the villa unless accompanied by at least one of the older
mages for two reasons: One, she was shy, and two, her leaf-green hair had
gotten her mistaken for a nymph or dryad far too many times in the months
before the group had managed to find each other, and glamour spells were her
major weak point magic-wise.

“What’s so great about Sparta? Their army keeps attacking the city!”

Zathir, one of their five trained healers and one of the few men of the group,
commented without looking up from the scroll he had acquired from some wandering
priest a few weeks before, and was still trying to translate; or perhaps decipher
would be a better word, because he could not for the life of him figure out what
sort of knowledge regarding the spiritual alignment of an army camp could be
gained by disemboweling a goat and examining its liver. He reached up and
scratched idly at his longish hair which, given the lack of outsiders, was its
normal icy blue. His confused frown turned to a look of horror-filled disgust.
He had lice. Again. Damnit!

“Sparta and the other neighboring city-states keep attacking Athens because, as
near as I can tell, the Athenians spent money that was meant to fund defensive
wars against the Persians to rebuild the temple complexes on their acropolis.
As for what is different about Sparta, while they produce less art and are more
martial in their attitudes, at least they don’t marry off and/or closet their
women away as soon as they become capable of bearing children. I think they
have a law forbidding women to marry until they are eighteen.”

Leeta blinked a couple times, joined by several of the others within hearing
range, and said, “Okay, that makes sense. But why didn’t we settle there in
the first place?”

“Because certain people were lazy butts and said that they weren’t going to
sleep on the ground one more night, and pitched a hissy-fit until the group
agreed to settle in the nearest city, namely here, just to shut them up,”
Thundara pointed out from her position by the wall, eyes half-closed with
exhaustion but focused firmly upon Migtan, also known as “Lord Prissy Little
Whiner Who Is Only Good For His Berzerker Battle Rage And Cooking Really
Good Meat.”

But not hunting, or even butchering, because he had issues with potentially
getting blood or other bodily fluids associated with death from “filthy beasts”
upon his perfectly-groomed person. By all accounts, His Lordship would have
died of starvation long before finding the group if Carnelian hadn’t found him
and taken pity. Not that he had ever thanked her, or even asked. He’d just
pranced up to her fire, snatched some rabbit that had been cooking on a skewer,
and proceeded to alternate between stuffing his face and degrading his hostess’
cooking skills and parentage.

He’d been in charge of meat preparation for whatever group he was with ever
since.

Migtan looked up at the sole remaining Senshi--not counting the Guardian of
Time, of course--and said, “What?” before returning to the arduous task of
filing a nick out of his fingernail.

Any further argument was forestalled when Leeta let out a triumphant squeak
as her spell finally got a lock on the hellhounds’ lair, herbs glowing a
faint gold/green/blue as they swirled around until forming a spiral and
settling upon the detailed topography map, centered on a distinct set of
hills approximately ten miles away from the city, and smack in the middle
of prime local farmland. The hills themselves hadn’t been developed with
anything bigger than a small lookout for soldiers on patrol to stay while
waiting for the next patrol to come with news and send them on to the next
guard station. If the hellhounds were careful to be quiet, the soldiers
would have never noticed their presence nearby, or they could have killed
the soldiers and planned to leave as soon as the city authorities realized
that several patrols worth of men were missing. Now that the Atlantian
Remnants, as they referred to themselves, knew where to look, the monsters
would be dispatched, the farmers would be grateful, and they’d have enough
money and other supplies to stockpile sufficiently for winter which, while
mild, still had them dealing with ocean-derived storms.

Things were looking up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ Juuban Hospital, ER ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things definitely weren’t looking up for Kino Makoto.

She’d told the paramedics and police that had showed up at her apartment
that she could not remember how she had ended up like she had, and that
was partially true. She still had absolutely no idea how she’d gone from
Point D and in her Senshi fuku to dressed in her school uniform in her bed,
in her home, with dried, half-dried, and fresh blood all over her body and
clothes, her wounds largely scabbed over in an uncertain fresh sort of way.
She was quite aware how, where and when she had acquired the wounds, but she
wouldn’t be saying anything regarding that in the near future, unless it was
to the Senshi or the Guardian cats.

Speaking of which, why in the world hadn’t they answered her communicator
calls? Surely she couldn’t be the only Senshi to have survived! Usagi at
least would have made it; she was the most powerful of them all. The petite
Moon Princess had obviously given Beryl and the Negaforce the smackdown to
end all smackdowns, otherwise the world wouldn’t be here, would it?

She flinched slightly as the door to her temporary room was pushed open,
the busy noises of the rest of the hospital flooding into her hypersensitive
ears, which she suspected were, along with her other remaining senses,
already adapting to her lack of sight, just like her Grandpa Kino’s had
reportedly done when he had lost his vision. The old man and his doctor
both claimed it was simply due to old age, but Grandma O’Brian-Kino insisted
that it was due to his “fool head bein’ punched, kicked, and slammed against
things almost as hard as it was in the name of getting stronger, the git!”
Of course, all of this was said with a look of bemused affection that belied
the strength of the words. These days Grandma and Grandpa lived in a nursing
home with Gran’s overweight cat Jenny Greenteeth (the cat had an odd fascination
for spinach and seaweed) and Grandpa’s seeing eye dog, Kaminari, as both of
them were getting on in age.

“Lord preserve us!”

Ah. That would mean Grandma was here. While the hospital’s nurses and
doctors had done a good job cleaning Makoto’s wounds while chattering about
possible surgery on her eyes that had raised hope in her heart until it
was discovered her rare blood type--which she felt was probably due to her
being a Sailor Senshi--made that option unfeasible and talk was downgraded
to tentative hope of cosmetic surgery to hide or lessen the scars, the rest
of her still felt not quite clean, and the cuts and bruises ached so horribly.

“...Konichiwa, ‘Ba-chan,” Makoto mumbled into the soft shoulder that had
found its way in front of her face, her grandmother obviously having crossed
the space between them and pulled her into a hug. The blind girl winced
slightly as the firm hug pressed a bit too hard on the soreness that seemed
to compose almost her entire body.

“Sorry, luv,” Sarah Kino said, pulling away abruptly from Makoto while
maintaining a gentle grip on the girl’s upper arms. “How are ye feelin’,
then? These terrors that call themselves doctors treatin’ ye well?”

Makoto’s lips twitched slightly into a smile; her paternal grandmother’s disdain
for modern science was nigh-legendary in their family. “I feel like I’ve been
hit by a shrapnel blast and then had a Mecha do a spazzy excuse of a jig on top
of me to the tune of ‘Bad Blood’ from the Slayers TRY CD, but otherwise...
Daijobu desu.”

“Ah.” There was a long silence, then, “I daen’t suppose you’re ready to give
me the real story behind all of this?”

Makoto reflexively jerked her head up and in the direction of Sarah’s voice in
shock.

“Daen’t take me for a fool, lass. I’ve known ye far too long to buy that load
of malarky ye fed to the police. Something big has happened and the world is
different while pretending for all it’s worth that it isn’t.”

Makoto swallowed hard, then said shakily, “I’ll tell you, Gran, but not here.
There’s more than just me at stake, and I won’t endanger anybody else.”

Before anything else could be said, a doctor came in and quickly informed them
both that she wouldn’t be able to be released into her grandparents’ care for
another week.

As Sarah was leaving, Makoto stopped her by saying, “Ba-chan, could you call
my school and tell them I won’t be there for a while?”

Sarah, a distinctly puzzled tone to her voice, replied with, “Of course ye’re
not, luv, ye’ll have to learn Braille and the like; and besides, who would I
call, the School District Superintendent? Ye just got expelled for fighting
at your last school, and we’d moved ye into a new district; did ye hit your
head and forget already?”

Shaken, Makoto weakly replied, “Yes, that must be it. Gomen nasai, Ba-chan.”

As soon as her hospital room door clicked closed, Makoto rolled onto her side
and curled into a fetal position, ignoring the annoying tug of the IV line on
her arm.

How could it be that everybody but her had forgotten that the past ten months
never happened?!

*************************

Ooh, what’s going on?! What’s gonna happen next?! You’re gonna have to stick
with me on this one to find out; yay!

On an interesting note, I got this name definition on the ‘net- ANDREA: masculine.
It works for Thundara, especially when you compare her/Makoto with how the average
Greek woman would have acted. I got this at
http://www.20000-names.com/female_greek_names.htm

Thanks go out to my reviewers:

Lita of Jupiter- Sorry about the scene change confusion; I’m fixing the summary,
so hopefully others won’t have the same problem. As for the blindness, well...
she’s keeping it. For how long though, well... *evil cackle!*

Cris- Thanks!

demonyo-anghel- *evil grin*

Xoni Newcomer- Thanks! And oh, how the plot will twist... Heh.

angela oaks- Thanks, and Mako-chan’s one of my favorites too, right up there with
Usagi and Hotaru.