Fatal Fury Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sailor Rifts ❯ Chapter 32: Unforseen Necessity, The ( Chapter 32 )

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

Sailor Moon/Rifts Crossover (Revised Edition) By Simon Woodington

Chapter 32: Unforseen Necessity, The

His strike would not fail to hit its mark, it could not, for if it
did, it would spell his doom. The heavy handed pole arm impaled the
shadowling through its middle, causing it to burst angrily into dust.

'Don't make this personal Thanus,' she warned, wielding an elaborately
detailed trident, and hovering threateningly over his couch, which
looked as though a large, wild boar had attacked it.

'Why, isn't it?' he retorted, ducking and rolling to his wall of
weaponry. Nimbly, he retrieved a crossbow and a handful of silver
tipped bolts. He raised the bow and fired three shots in what seemed a
single motion. With what appeared to be a mere twitch of the trident,
she blocked each one, and the next four that followed, before replying
a blast of fiery energy that threw the young man against the
aforementioned wall.

'No,' she replied soberly. 'I liked you.'

Rising and retrieving a short bow and a handful of arrows, he
commented:

'You're cute. I could have liked you too,' he offered, letting a
triple notched shot loose, only to watch it repelled. 'Attempted
murder really sours the possibility of a relationship. I mean, there's
not even much chance of a first kiss.'

'Attempted? You place too great a value on your power level. You don't
even know how badly you're outmatched,' she stated, not moving to
block his incoming half dozen shots, which she reflected with a force
of energy. 'On the other hand, you could always quit the Knighthood.
Then I could avoid killing you.'

'Funny how you believe you're actually going to win,' he returned,
gritting his teeth as he approached her with a glowing Bo staff. 'If
you were the Xalia I knew, then you would realize I'll never quit.
There's no such thing. This is what I live for.'

'I just had to ask, you know, be fair, and all that crap,' she
explained as they fell into a blinding routine of strikes, blocks,
parries that no human eye could perceive. Gradually, as the sweat
appeared upon each brow, as each pair of eyes tightened in glares of
concentration, Thanus noted something.

The dark energy of her trident had become greater than the gentle
radiance of his.

'What you live for is what you die for!' she snarled, shoving him away
with such inhuman force that he sailed into his wall of weapons, and
sank right back against a fallen katana. Dumbly, he gazed down at the
blade protruding from his chest, dropping the Bo, which crumbled to
dust as its creator was fatally wounded. He glanced up at Xalia
briefly, a crestfallen and heartbroken expression his final conclusion
of just how life had treated him.

Somewhat unfairly.

His head then slumped down, his body toppling forward onto the floor,
an empty shell.

'Guess what cutie, life is unfair,' she remarked coldly, glancing
indifferently upon the corpse. 'It's not your fault. It's just the way
things are.'

---

It had been, well, only a week since their last visit. Nasura's
demands had only exponentially multiplied since the news had reached
her of the Xalia's disappearance.

:But why hold a meeting at the dojo?; she thought, a concerned welling
in her heart. :What could be so urgent?:

She smiled briefly at her blond locked husband, who replied a striking
sparkle in his eye. He enjoyed working with the girls, training,
teaching. Having recently paid for the land, he had returned to his
training, giving fine instruction to the small wealth of students by
which they were blessed. It would be the Kei's first visit. The
vibrant woman bowed her head, poking at her dinner with a lax hand. It
troubled her. There was such an attitude of foreboding about it.

'Mai-san, my dove... What troubles you?' he uttered softly in
Japanese.

Her eyes met his sharply, watering. "My dove," a term of great
endearment between them. For a flickering she recalled the snowy
creature as it paled in her hands.

'Nasura-san will be joining us soon.'

He merely frowned at her as he set his fork upon a barren plate. She
stood, not bothering to excuse herself from the table as habit
dictated. The loveseat caught her in all the silks of her kimono, her
slender weight beset by breaching emotions.

It was several moments before she felt his presence, and noticed the
altering light of his shadow upon her.

'At least they're not asking of Tenma and Kai,' he offered with a
thoughtful calm.

He joined her in a fashion that placed her head on his broad
shoulders, bodies meeting gently, for comfort, yet incalculably more,
their hands grasped such as had been at the point of their marriage.
Mai's mind was blanketed by the frigid culmination of events many
years past.

'Would you exchange any of the discourse for what she has brought us?'

Her reply was without hesitance, 'Never.'

'Are you sure it was a good idea to send the twins away?'

She nodded slightly.

'Makoto is sure they'll be safe with her friends. That way they can't
get hurt...' she paused and took a deep breath. 'And Tenma's baby...'

'I understand. There's no sense in endangering them.'

Silence transcended their intimacy, and watched them in their concern,
and alighting fear. A white flash suffused the dimness of the room,
drawing Andy to his feet as a sharp bolt of wind and a humanoid shadow
carelessly dismantled the pane-glass patio door. The table collapsed
upon itself as a laugh sailed to the ears of the battle ready pair,
who marshaled their forces, expecting combat.

'Get up senshi! Fight if you can!' wailed a ferociously determined
female voice.

Mai pronounced her attack, and presence, with spoken phrase and motion
of hand, after which her white fans soundly battered the silhouetted
target, who fell with the abrupt breaking of water.

'Pick on someone your own level!' she snapped dramatically, hearing
someone twenty years her junior. Sputtered and coughing, the blond
creature flipped backwards out of the pool, water favouring her lithe
form.

'A challenge!' smirked a woman of considerable nerve and hair length.
'Too bad about the Neo Girl, really... though much too weak for my
tastes.'

'Crescent Slash!' was the calling, the summoning not far behind,
though easily evaded by the limber Mai. She hissed angrily, seething.
With a long legged run, she leapt at the woman, leaning forward, all
weight and crimson heat in her elbow. The woman smiled, and ducked
back, rolling back on her shoulders. As the back of her head met the
earth, she pressed her hands palm down, and with a blinding surge,
boosted herself upwards.

'Mina!'

Mai glimpsed Makoto standing in the gaping portal of the patio doorway
as a splitting agony threw her, like so many sandbags, into the
shimmering manufactured oasis.

'Not quite, baby-girl...! I've still got my face!' she winked, tossing
a 'peace' gesture at the more than fuming Makoto, who growled as her
iridescent broadsword came free from its scabbard. Andy's foot, in the
white heat of a beautiful roundhouse kick, caught the back of the
familiar looking stranger's head and sent her flipping into the pool
where she failed to surface.

'Oh no!' Andy cursed, before diving down to meet his wife who fought
valiantly for air. The doppelganger's hands fit nicely around Mai's
neck, despite the brunette's urgent struggles to remove them. Makoto
neared the edge of the pool, watching them closely enough to see the
deathly buildup of scarlet light before it solved her problem by
tossing Andy and Mai's unconscious bodies from the pool and to the
grassy earth.

'Is that how you want to play it,' Makoto growled, watching the
sputtering blond extract herself from the blast site tiredly. A silver
light extended itself from the rune blade, encompassing the enraged
senshi, who exuded an aura of righteous anger.

'Huh?' she gasped eloquently, staring stupidly at the iridescent woman
before her.

With a fearsome snarl upon her face, she raised the blade above her
head, her target transfixed by the beauty of the attack. Makoto
screamed the following as she leapt at her intended deathmate:

'Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!'

As though the sun had quadrupled it's divine luminescence, every eye
closed, every ear rapt/horrified in the audibly singular piercing of
flesh...

'No!!'

Makoto's defeated voice rang, drawing Mai's hallowed focus from the
dire depths of blackness, and her blurred sight upon the eerily
suspended figures. The rune blade caught in the blond woman's
stomach... and as recognition dawned... the crimson spire protruding
betwixt Makoto's shoulder blades, beyond wind tossed earth brown hair.

'Nakio-san! No!' cried a youthful voice in unfathomable loss. Ayla
knelt over the inert form of Haisha, struggling to secure her life as
it fled though the crimson marking the fragmented oak table. Whilst
Masurani's fury ascended, a heavily muscled figure appeared just
underneath the still-motion forms, a large club in hand, a handsomely
dark snarl upon his roguish face.

'Die...!' Masurani vehemently declared, fists clenched to whitening,
her form alight by a scarlet force. 'DIE!!'

"Mako-!"

A surge, like that of enfueled flame, became the aura of seething
energy about her, and she uttered no word, but a fearsome cry as she
jab-punched the nimbus of power at the already dying blond. The blood
coursing from the left corner of her mouth dissipated as the rest of
her, a raw burst of ashes the only remnant. He caught Makoto's body,
and was gone less than an instant later. As the emotional bonfire
abated within the heaving breast of Masurani, her eyes grew wide, as
did a spark of fear.

'Did... I...' she panted, drawing a hand through her thick turquoise
hair. 'Did I just kill Minako?!'

'No Masura-chan,' Andy noted gravely as he took Mai into his arms.

'And did he say...?'

'Masurani, I need help!' Ayla interrupted fearfully.

Masurani hustled over to Ayla's side as she proclaimed:

'Help me get her into the spare bedroom. Quickly!'

'Hai!' she acknowledged, easily gathering the limp girl into her arms.
As they proceeded, there was a subtle knock at the door. 'Andy-san,
would you get that? I need Mai with me!'

'Hai Ayla-chan!'

---

'Set her down here. Where's...' the deep crimson haired girl glanced
about. 'Ah, Naritha! Come here.'

Naritha bowed slightly.

'What is your need?'

'I...' she closed her eyes and shook her head. 'You're an empath,
right?'

'Hai? How know you?' she blinked.

'Doesn't matter. I need you to read her. If she's bleeding inside we
need to get her to a hospital.'

Naritha set her hands lithely upon the copper-haired girl's forehead
as she bowed her head and drew her mind to bear on the victim.

'There's no time, Ayla!' declared a studious voice, quite accustomed
to the challenge of command. 'She'll bleed to death well before
Naritha's done.'

Ayla whirled about on her toes to address the speaker.

'Nasura! I... I mean... um...'

'Forget it! Catch,' she issued, tossing a crimson toned crystal
towards the stunned young woman. 'Naritha, place this crystal on
Haisha's chest,' she continued, handing her a purple crystal. 'You're
the only one who can get her to activate it.'

With an uncertain curl at the corner of her lip, she set the flat
octagonal crystal just above Haisha's small breasts. She then replaced
her hands upon Haisha's crimson marked forehead before bowing her
head. Ayla watched as a blue shimmering line washed over the badly
brutalized young woman. Her broken arm, leg, and ankle set as a purple
shoulderless bodysuit replaced her stained and vaguely torn clothes.

'Wow...' Masurani whispered, as if afraid of upsetting the process of
change. To complete the mystic transformation, metallic-white armlets,
shin guards, breastplate, belt, wristbands and choker took their place
upon the now formal outfit. Upon close examination, Ayla perceived
that she was not completely healed, for there were a number of small
cuts and bruises adorning her abruptly remarkably clothed teenage
figure, where former gashes and major wounds had once been.

'Kei! How she healed so?' Naritha gasped, swathed by a stunning
wonder.

'Well, it's the Neo Senshi armour. It augments your strength, and all
sorts of other things...'

Ayla smiled, her face lighting up with the knowledge.

'Then that's it! You've chosen the new senshi!' she nigh positively
gushed.

Nasura frowned vaguely.

'No, I haven't. They chose for me,' she found a chair and sat down,
head bowed solemnly. 'I take it the three of you were attacked?'

'Hai sensei,' Ayla affirmed. 'The woman looked like Makoto. I don't
believe it though.'

'Good!' Nasura started, her gaze meeting Ayla's. 'I've got enough
trouble without the complication of the clones. Nice to see you're
thinking it through. You weren't hurt, either, I see. I have Masurani
to thank?'

'Hardly,' Masurani frowned. 'It was Naritha that kept her off our
backs... not that she had much of a choice. She really didn't seem to
like her.'

'Shao-Enya. Most unpleasant woman,' Naritha nodded, a faintly matching
darkness in her face and voice. 'Hm? She's still alive? Unfortunate. I
was hoping you'd killed her. In any event, you're right Naritha, the
lot of them are nasty buggers. Murderous lot. Powerful in the extreme.
They've killed the other squires. It's you five or nothing.'

The rush of gasps came so sharply that Nasura was surprised to note
Haisha's among them.

'If there was a time to fight,' she snarled ferally as she sat weakly
up, 'this is it!'

'Not like that you won't!' Ayla rebuked. 'You nearly died!'

'Do you think we can honestly afford to stand aside and wait for them
to hit us? They won't be so gentle the next round!' Haisha winced as
she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

'Ayla is right Haisha. Your senshi strength is only an amplification
of your own. It cannot augment that which is not there,' Nasura
explained gently. 'Besides, she's the leader of the Neo Senshi now,
you must obey her.'

Haisha looked stunned, gaping as Ayla did.

'Wha-at...?' Ayla stammered.

'I don't believe it!' Haisha blurted, plainly aghast. She glared at
her 'superior,' not saving anyone face by hiding her feelings.

'I should be leading the Neo Senshi! I don't know that this bookworm
has any experience in the field!'

'Bookworm!?' Ayla snapped angrily. 'How about you, you...'

'Silence! Neither do you, Haisha,' Nasura reminded her firmly as she
stood, bringing attention to the state of command she had not ever
quite fallen out of. 'Your father's involvement in the military hardly
replaces the caring wit this young woman has already brought this
team. Now, I won't hear any more about this matter.'

Both girls bowed their heads, and answered an affirmative 'Hai.'

'Kei-san,' Masurani requested gently, 'I meant to ask about kinship
rites.'

Nasura seemed to sigh.

'They will be honoured. The traditional armor is part of the crystal,
but be aware that it uses a great deal of chi,' Nasura warned. 'And
know that we must move, now, to counterattack. Haisha's headstrong,
but right. She will accompany me as we attempt to determine the
whereabouts of the last member of the Neo Senshi. The three of you,
and the CSM, will make the stand at the front lines.'