Fatal Fury Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sailor Rifts ❯ Chapter 34: Arisen: Question of Family ( Chapter 34 )

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

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

Chapter 34: Arisen: Question of Family

The Resistence had been called into action, since the previously
inactive Vortex crystal had reversed its role by issuing forth small
amounts of shadowlings into the world of the newly ascended Angel
Senshi. The Neo Senshi, on the other hand, moved forward in an attempt
to destroy the crystal altogether. Between the two forces, and the
courageous citizens, the shadowlings were beaten back to the source,
and for a short time annulled.

This, unfortunately, lasted only twelve hours, after which a surge of
the creatures from the crystal began to route the human forces,
consisting of largely untrained ranks. However, as slowly as the
military tended to respond to the formerly unverified threat, they did
come into play, bringing all manner of tanks and troops to contend
with the enemy spewing crystal, which it seemed remained undamaged by
countless rounds of weapons fire.

For the time, the war was a stand-off. There was time to plan, among
other things.

'I don't know if I can face them. What if I do, only to fail against
Uraki?'

The red-haired Canadian regarded the three women as an understanding
mother only would, and spoke with concern:

'My daughter is out there right now, risking her life for me, for us.
How do you think I feel, not knowing if she's hurt, or worse? This is
not a question you should be asking me right now.'

'So sorry, Osaka-san,' Usagi offered plainly in a deep bow. 'This is
difficult for me.'

'We're relying on you, Usagi. If you don't know what to do, then I
cannot help you. And frankly, the idea scares the hell out of me. We
need you more than you know.'

'I've always had a knack for the wierd stuff - being Sailor Moon for
all these years,' Usagi began in reply softly. 'It's everything else
that gets me. School, tests, punctuality...'

Osaka gazed at her with a puzzled, nearly pained expression.

'You're scared.'

With a piercing frown, Usagi looked up at her, her blue eyes
glimmering, and nodded.

She was afraid to ask.

'Osaka... what about our parents?' she finally murmured, her head
bowed as the words slipped out. She looked up again as they fell
heavily to the carpeted floor.

Osaka almost paled, the knowledge settling in her small frame like a
chilling wind upon her resilient, tempered soul.

'It is not my place to say, not this way. Ami, you will find your
mother defending your home with a troop from the Resistance. We have
no word on your father. Apparently he is not in Tokyo, so we can only
assume he's safe. Their attacks have yet to even spread further than
the downtown area. Rei and Usagi, however, I must speak to alone.'

'Then I will go,' she stated, rising to her feet, and bowing deeply to
her friends.

'Usagi... before I begin, I ask you to tell Minako that her parents...
they did not survive the intial attack.'

Osaka's voice was filled with remorse and delicate tones as she spoke.

'Uraki-Ayo targeted your homes first, and slipped by our forces mostly
unnoticed. It grieves me to tell you...'

---

Somehow, even with the knowledge that she had survived, facing her
made little more sense. What could she say: 'Mama! I went to a strange
world, had a split personality who adopted a half-demon girl and got
married to a Half-Giant Warrior of Mercy in another dimension! Then I
was burned at the stake as a heretic, and resurrected as an angelic
being by the incarnation of fate, Phate - that's right "P-h-a-t-e" -
in another dimension! Oh, and guess what! I'm Sailor Mercury!'

The best of luck, Mrs. Mizuno.

From her vantage point, she could see her mother in fatigues, wielding
an impressive looking double barreled shotgun as she tore into a
half-dozen shadowlings approaching her house. She was coping, it
seemed, and as she issued the command to retreat to the several other
members of the Resistance, it was plain she was coping quite well.

It was as if she didn't miss her.

'Mama?'

She blinked, half-smiling at her daughter.

'Hai Shyanne?'

She winced at the remorse in her voice.

'She's my grandma, isn't she.'

Ami nodded simply.

'Hai little blossom, she is. She doesn't know we're back.'

The sprite-like girl nodded, then fixed her eyes upon the group as
they shut themselves within her barracaded house. There was no
wondering, for the moment why her mother had taken the front lines.
The building was filled with the wounded and dying that had gone
before her. She was partaking of her duty to the best of her human
ability. Ami found herself discovering a new respect for her mother.
Then Shyanne spoke sharply.

'We should help, Mama-san!' she frowned, pointing skyward. 'Grandma's
not safe!!'

Plainly; nearly twenty of the shadowlings descended upon the battered
and worn building. It had the attitude of weakness, as if... even as
the thought came, the front of the building collapsed in upon itself,
exposing the makeshift infirmary. Acting before thinking, Ami grabbed
Shyanne and flew towards the house, flaring her aura dramatically as
she sailed towards the newly founded battle site.

Not moments later were the less than two dozen creatures banished, and
the passage of an expression of complete astonishment into a loving
welcome.

'Oh my God, Ami!'

Tears came, as the hug remained, and Shyanne smiled glowingly, her
eyes filled with wonderous happiness, inspired by her mother's
emotion.

---

They were alone for the suspension of time, it seemed, and the news
Osaka bore did not come without its emotional impact. As she spoke it,
the force struck her like something of a sledgehammer. Like
scintilcating shards of scattered glass, a part of her world had been
destroyed. Then came the overwhelming need to be with them.

As she flew to their indicated locale, there was something else, a
nagging emptiness that could not be filled by even Mamoru's love and
dedication. A young boy who's performance in school had been
dramatically altered by her disappearance; a mother who cried for days
every morning at the realization that she wouldn't be late for class;
a father who knew all too suddenly that boyfriends would never again
endanger her.

There was nothing else to do, they needed her. Returning home through
the midnight sky carnage, dispersing the occasional shadowling that
threatened. Meaningless. Each of the dozens of creatures she destroyed
with little more than a blinking effort mattered naught aside her
ascending panic as she noted the destitute surroundings of her block,
how many of the homes were vacant, some torn open and gutted, others
only lacking occupants.

It should not have been a surprise to discover her own to be a shell.
Images flashed in her mind, her brother crying, her mother tumbling...
limp, hurt... the raised, frightened voice of her father.

'Usagi?'

Through blurred vision she percieved him, gazing numbly up at the
winged woman that had been his scattered, lively, energetic daughter.
Beside him was her brother, Shingo.

'Papa-san?' she whispered, landing gracefully, her robes swirling
about her slender legs as she approached her misty-eyed father. He
hadn't shaved in weeks, and looked as though the emotional buildup
inside was finally taking its toll on his body, and his soul.

Reading his face, and his emotion, she could see the tearing between
despair and eternal gratitude. Foreknowledge did not restrain her
question:

'Where is Mama-san...?'

His mouth opened, held, then shut as he bowed his fatigued visage.
Tears came, and she fought them not, she merely came into a desperate
hug with lost father and brother.

---

Rei had no one to turn to save Adolphus, who gazed as she did upon the
long settled corpse of the temple. She wept in his arms, remembering
his overbearing voice, his foolhardy disregard for his age, endless
chasing of girls, and protective strength.

'I'm sorry Grampa,' she whispered. As she did, she felt a distinctly
familiar presense, accompanied by the rising flame of her prayer-fire
amongst the lifeless wreckage of her home.

<Don't be sad Rei,> issued a somewhat ragged voice.

'Grampa?' she blinked, gazing at his transparent image within the
flames.

<I've waited so long to see you. All grown up!>

'Grampa...'

<I'm sorry Rei. I missed you.>

'What happened?'

<I... All those times... you said "slow down Grampa"... I could ignore
you, because you took care of me. But when you were taken from me...>

'Oh Grampa...!' she sobbed, her eyes holding to his bald-headed tired
looking face.

<I loved you. I might never have listened, but...>

'I know Grampa... I know.'

<I waited so long for you. I just couldn't hold on any longer.>

'I'm sorry, I screwed up!'

<Don't you say that! You did the best you could! You stayed and put up
with this old fool. Does your boyfriend take care of you?>

'Grampa!' she laughed half-heartedly, then soberly smiled: 'Hai.'

<Good. I'm going to see your Grandma... so you get this creep...
Uraki-Ayo, will you?>

Her voice was reverant as she spoke, whispering a final departure.

'I will Grampa, for you.'

---

'Usagi...'

They sat upon the edge of the dark, pock marked and war-scarred
street, silent until he offered his voice in an attempt to stay the
tension of so many years apart, and such violent diversity.

'Hai Papa?'

'I just wanted you to know that I love you.'

She leaned over, resting her head upon his dirt darkened shoulder,
letting her right wing shield her father and brother from the silky
breeze. The silence after their embrace had been on his part. The
death of her mother, and his wife, passed in a sharp burst of sobbing.
Thereafter, they had listened to Usagi's explaination of everything,
her being the super-heroine Sailor Moon, leader of the Bishojo Sailor
Senshi, and Princess of the long shattered Moon Kingdom. Like a
hamster running in place, the truth of her words, there was no
mistaking her now, she was so lucid, hung there, slowly reaching the
very point of registration in his troubled consciousness.

'Thank you Papa.'

'I missed you, sis'.'

She smiled warmly at the frightened, yet somehow toughened boy.

'Papa... I want to tell you something.'

'Hai?'

She hesitated, no telling if his reaction had altered since...

'I'm married.'

His face reddened slightly, but he remained silent, knowing she was
beyond his parental lockhold in that facet.

'That's... that's... Who is it?'

'Mamoru Chiba.'

'Oh cool! You said he's Tuxedo Kamen, right?' Shingo piped excitedly.

She nodded.

'I'd like to talk to him sometime,' her father issued, picking his
glasses away from his face and wiping them with his grimy formal
shirt. 'I wouldn't want to have to hurt him for mistreating my lovely
daughter.'

His face, while mostly stiffly unemotional, was betrayed quite simply
by the fondness and trust in the tones of his moderate voice. Usagi
wrapped her arms around him and smiled beamingly.

'Oh Papa-san!'

His arms encircled her, and he wept gently, silently, and she only
knew by the psychic wash of fear and love that encompassed her as the
glow of warm entitled to those of family love in truth grasped them
like a divine calm.

'I love you Usagi... I always will...'

---

Usagi had time thereafter to deliver the horrible message to her
friend, who took to Carl immediately, without regard for the
surrounding warriors. Carl removed her from their presense, and upon
discovering the cause of her tears, offered what little, yet grand
support he only could, then. There were no words in her heart for him,
or anyone else. Only a powerful, nearly overwhelm roaring wave of
loss, hurt, and comfirmation a long nursed nightmare.

In many ways, despite being an angel, and beyond surviving a world
which shredded people like discarded paper, she reached that edge...
the one where during a late night, the car would halt in the middle of
the empty, cold road, while the occupant would leap to a watery death
for no apparent reason... or digging a knife into the wrist merely out
of curiosity, only to be caught white and dead the following morning.
That edge that snapped the resilent human mind. Perhaps it was due to
her immortality that the psychological band did not breach, or perhaps
it was her own innate strength, or perhaps it was because of the
support and emotional efforts of Carl Silver.

None of it mattered. Nary a wit. Was there a chance for the scar to
heal? Certainly, but not then. It was enough that she had to find it
in her to be functional on the most basic level. Lives depended upon
her. Perhaps that was another factor driving her onward when nothing
else might have.

Perhaps.

---

'Mama?'

She gazed at her blue-winged angel child, her face an unreadable mask.

'Yes Ami-chan?'

Always "chan" regardless of age they had both affectionately agreed.
This manifestation of Chaos on Earth failed to remove that from their
hearts.

'I'm sorry I have to do this.'

'Why? I know how important this is.'

'But you... you... you aren't... Mama... why aren't you smiling?'

'I'm sorry angel... would you rather I fake it?'

'Mama...!' she pined, looking deeply stricken.

She bowed her near-black haired head, the conflict of emotion pulsing
powerfully within her as her heart thudded against her caging ribs.
She was weeping when she finally raised her head to regard her
daughter.

'It's everything you told me,' she started, hands folded limply
against her bandaged stomach. 'I can't get my head around it. Died?
Half cyborg? Insane...? What is the world trying to do to us?'

Ami just shook her head in silence.

'You know, if I could have done anything... I just wish... I wish I
could have protected you!'

'But Mama, I feel like this was my fault! I couldn't stop it!'

'It's not, and you know it!' she almost whimpered, wiping her eyes
awkwardly with her war-sodden hands. 'You did the best you could...'

'But it wasn't enough.'

'I know.'

There was a shifting silence.

'You know I'm just happy to have you back,' she offered sincerely. 'My
little intellectual is an angel...! I always knew you were, but
this...'

'I know. It seems impossible.'

'All of it. Why didn't you trust me enough to tell me you were Sailor
Mercury?'

'Mama... How could I? I'm not... not really... your daughter. In no
conceivable way would you have entertained that thought.'

'You're right. Only this...' she glanced around at the ruins of their
home. 'Makes it real to me. And losing you.'

'Oh Mama...' she almost crooned, then supplemented: 'I love you.'

'I love you too angel. Even if I'm not your biological mother.'

'As if that matters!' she replied sharply, then; 'Um...' she started
after several moments of silence. 'How is she?'

'Sleeping. She's amazing Ami... so beautiful. So much like you! I told
her a story, like I used to when you were so young, and such a
gorgeous doll... and she fell asleep smiling. You're a wonderful
mother Ami. I'm so proud!'

'Oh Mama! Thank you...!'

'We will take care of her until you get back... okay?'

'Mama... I...'

'No. Don't argue. We've got a war to win. Besides, she's a tough girl.
She'll be fine.'

'Hai Mama-san,' she smiled gloriously.

---

For Makoto, there was no one to lose, for her parents had died long
before the war. Her feelings, as a result, when she eventually learned
of the plight her friends suffered, was directed in the offerings of
sympathy and emotional support. It was a learned thing then, for never
before had she been leaned upon with so great a need, nor by so many
at once.

It was for her a time of selflessness, and undoubtable growth.