Gundam Wing Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Mended Wing ❯ Mended Wing - Chapter Thirteen ( Chapter 13 )

Authors Notes: I think everyone here should remind Fuu-chan of the dangers of killing off fanfiction authors before their story is done. ::rubs the back of her head, which was beaten into the ground many times by Fuu-chan:: Owie… my head still hurts. Seriously people, there's a reason behind what happened at the end of the last chapter. Maybe not a very good one… ::blinks as she KNOWS they're all glaring at her murderously:: Um… okay, it was a REALLY good reason. But you're just going to have to keep reading and see! Since getting chapter twelve out of the way, I think I've got my steam on this story back (Authors Notes update: Okies, so I lied!). Whee!! I just hope I don't get killed before it's over…

 

Thankies: I'm not sure I should thank you this time, Fuu-chan. ::sniffles:: You tried to kill me!!! ::grins:: Oh, okies, fine! THANKIES! Tensei-chan! Now if you'd only actually READ this story. Pleiades-sama!!! Thankies for all your HP #5 info! Whee!! There are some other people, but my brain has gone on vacation. Oh, Moon Faery-chan. Though I don't think she's reading this fic either.

 

Disclaimers: ::insert proper denials here::

 

Mended Wing - Chapter Thirteen

 

 

Venus didn't realize she was on her knees until she saw her hands in front of her face, fingers splayed over the calm white surface of the Moon. Calm surface, so calm, while inside she was a storm, a torrent. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream. She felt her insides shaking and saw the shaking evident on the outside; her arms trembled.

“Venus!” Someone was yelling her name. “Venus, snap out of it!”

The blonde blinked and looked up into the tight expression of Sailormercury. The other woman had her hands on Venus' shoulders and was trying to pull her to her feet.

“We don't have time for this. We have to be ready for the challenges.” Even as she spoke, Mercury's voice cracked. “We can mourn later.”

“No.” Venus tried to shake her friend off but didn't have the strength. “What's the point now? What's the point? Even if we get the Eye and revive Usagi-chan, Mamoru-san is gone. Crystal Tokyo will never exist no matter what we do!” Despair wrapped around her heart and squeezed mercilessly.

“Maybe we can revive them both with the Eye. Maybe we can't, but we have to try. We have to, or we aren't Senshi. If we don't try we aren't Senshi worthy to serve the Tsuki no Hime and we might as well die ourselves.”

The words seeped into the choking despair and loosened it, allowing Venus to breathe again. She nodded and stood, facing the doorway and Mamoru's corpse again.

From every spike embedded in his skin flowed a small river of their prince's blood. The redness collected in a ditch at the base of the closed doors until it was full. Then the ditch drained, the spikes retracted, and Mamoru fell to the ground. Venus didn't watch him hit the ground. She couldn't. Instead she watched as the lines of the carved images in the doors filled with bright, glowing red. The pictures burned with redness and scorched themselves into a permanent place in her mind. Then the red flashed and vanished and Venus heard a distinct click from the doors. They swung slowly wide open, large enough for the entire group to walk through.

Inside was dark. The only light came from the open doors and as soon as all of them were inside the doors closed, leaving them completely without sight. There was only time for Venus to gasp before a line of torches on either side of the room spontaneously lit up. They were in a medium-sized elongated chamber; Venus noticed four indentations at chest-height in the wall at her left. At the end of the chamber, to the right of another set of double doors, stood a life-sized statue of a woman with one hand raised, palm outward. Though her eyes were blank and white, the crescent moon at her forehead and the twin buns on her head revealed her to be Queen Hecate.

“Halt,” said a mechanized female voice. “Whoever seeks to pass must know this: only when the past entwines the future will the way be opened. Beyond this point are the final four challenges. With open hearts these challenges must be faced, and with faith. Anything less will end in death. Good journey.”

Silence.

“Good journey, my ass.” Everyone turned to glare at Quatre. He shrugged. “Not like she was giving us any real options. `When the past entwines the future.' What the hell's that supposed to mean, anyway?”

“I think it obviously deals with us,” said Mercury, tapping away on her computer. “After all, for the Senshi this is the present, but for the pilots it's the past and you're from our future.”

Uranus summed it up for the rest of them when she very eloquently said, “Huh?”

Mercury sighed.

“Okay, the past part refers to us, because we are the past as far as the pilots are concerned. Following me so far?” Encouraged by the nods all around, Mercury continued. “However, as far as WE are concerned, they are the future, and so they are what the future part refers to. Got it?”

“Vaguely.”

“Vaguely is better than not at all,” Mercury told Uranus. She was about to say something else when Wufei spoke up.

“What is this about `entwining'? This does not mean that we must . . . erm . . .” The Chinese man's face flushed brightly as he left his sentence dangling in the air for the rest of them to interpret. It was Father Duo who meeped and flushed next. That started a chain reaction down the line of former pilots and Senshi until finally Mercury picked up on what Wufei meant and scowled even through her blush.

“NO! That's NOT what it means!”

“Then what does it mean?”

Mercury looked Venus straight in the eyes.

“I have no idea.”

The group instantly began shooting ideas. Unfortunately, they all spoke at the same time, and the buzz of uncontrolled conversation made Venus' head hurt. She took a step away from the others, surprised and a bit nauseated at how calmly they could argue amongst themselves so soon after seeing the gruesome death of their friend and prince. Venus, for her part, still felt like vomiting.

The insistent humming of the others hovered over her head as she walked further away. Venus sighed, bowed her head, and placed her right hand on the wall to support her weight.

Immediately, she felt the sap of strength. Venus looked up and saw that her hand had landed into one of the indentations on the wall. Her eyes traveled upwards, seeing a small channel carved into the wall moving to the ceiling, then across. The channel then moved down the opposite wall to an identical indentation to the one Venus' hand rested in.

“Uh . . . guys . . .”

No one heard, and the buzz of desperate conversation continued.

“Guys . . .” Her hand began to glow with golden light, a light that slowly trekked up the length of the carved channel. “HEY IDIOTS!”

Several shocked faces turned to her. Venus pointed to her glowing hand.

“You think this might mean something?”

Eyes of all shapes and colors went wide upon viewing the golden light, and Mercury stepped forward with her computer. The chamber had gone blissfully silent on Venus' question and she hoped it would remain so. It did, at least as long as it took for Mercury to scan the phenomenon; Venus felt weaker with each passing second.

“Well,” her smarter counterpart finally said, “this is interesting.”

“'Interesting' isn't exactly what I want to hear, Mercury.” Venus tried to pull away from the wall, but her hand wouldn't budge. “Especially when I can't get away from whatever it is!”

“It looks like your powers are being drained from you.”

Venus felt as blank as all of the others looked.

“M-My powers?”

“Yes. The planetary powers gifted to you as the princess and Senshi of the planet Venus. Your Crescent Beam, your Love and Beauty Shock, your accelerated healing as well as your enhanced speed and strength.”

“That must be connected to the riddle,” Triton said quietly from the back of the group. “Otherwise it wouldn't be happening.”

“You're right. From what I've been able to learn about Queen Hecate, she planned everything to a precise degree and never left anything to chance.” Mercury sighed and began scanning the rest of the chamber. “This would be part of her plan, and I think the rest of it is over there.” She pointed to one of the identical indentations on the opposite wall. “With the route of the channel taken into account, that's where you're powers are going.”

“So someone should be on the other side to receive those powers.” Triton looked at his fellow former pilots with wavering green eyes. “One of us.”

 

 

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

 

 

Of course it made perfect sense. If the past and future were supposed to entwine, what better way than taking the powers from those representing the past and place them into those representing the future? But there were only eight indentations; four past, four for the future. There were five of them from the future, if these girls could be believed. After everything he'd seen, Father Duo was beginning to believe them.

He thought of the fate of Mamoru, and the words the man had spoken before going into what he knew would be his death.

"When she returns, and everything is back to normal, she's going to need you. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Take care of her."

Father Duo didn't understand those words. Why would she need him? Why should he be the one to take care of a woman he had never met?

“She was the kindest, gentlest, most loving person you could ever meet.”

“Who should the four be?” Sailormars' voice broke through his musings, and Father Duo found himself following the conversation. “I mean, the seven. Venus managed to blunder herself into this mess—“

“Hey!”

“Which of the rest of us should give up our powers, and to which four?”

The tall woman known in this form as Sailoruranus stepped forward and opened her mouth to speak, but Sailorjupiter stopped her.

“It should be us, the remaining three Inner Court. After all, we are the ones who swore our lives and duties to Princess Serenity.” Her mouth thinned and she nodded to herself. “It should be us. I volunteer.”

Sailorjupiter moved to the indentation beside Venus and placed her hand in it. In an instant a green light surrounded her fingers and began to slowly move up the channel, as Venus' golden light had. Father Duo felt his eyes burn with tears at this gesture, not knowing why it moved him so. The burning grew when Mars and Mercury moved, without words, to the remaining two places and did the same, red and blue light moving from their hands up the wall.

The four of them turned their solemn eyes to the five men.

“You decide amongst yourselves who will receive our powers,” Mercury told them. “But hurry; I'm not sure what will happen to us if no one is on the other end.” Then she looked toward Sailoruranus and Sailorneptune. “Since the participants have been chosen, you two take the fifth back with you to Earth. There is no reason for the three of you to be here when there is nothing you can do. If this succeeds then we'll be able to get back on our own.”

Father Duo felt panic rising in the back of his throat, but something even stronger from deep within a part of him he hadn't known. The other four men looked at the women and then amongst themselves in a silent panic; Duo recognized that gleam in their eyes at the same uneasiness knotting his stomach. Then he looked at Venus, whose blue eyes were locked on him and shone. She smiled to him even as her arm began to tremble. The light from her had traveled halfway up the wall. When she turned away, Father Duo could see her sweating with the effort to just stay standing, and he knew what he had to do.

Driven by the fire burning in that place he couldn't name, Father Duo turned and walked to the opposite wall, placing his hand in the indentation across from Sailorvenus'.

With sudden, dizzying speed, her golden light burst through the channel, across the ceiling, and down into Duo's hand. It extended to cover his arm, bringing warmth with it and a strength Duo hadn't known it was possible to feel. When it was over, he pulled his hand away and looked back towards his benefactor.

Minako had fallen to her knees, panting. Her Sailor fuku was gone, replaced by her civilian clothing.

“I f-feel strange,” she stuttered, “weak.”

“You're used to feeling strong,” Mercury responded. “Now you're just an ordinary girl, Aino Minako, and you're not used to having ordinary strength.”

Minako nodded but did not try to speak again. Duo looked at his fellows.

“It's alright, I'm not hurt. It doesn't hurt at all. I . . . I feel strong.”

While he marveled at his own confidence, three of the four stepped forward and took places at the wall. Wufei placed himself to receive the power of Jupiter.

“I would be honored to bear the power of such a strong woman,” he said as he rested his hand into the indentation. As the green light settled into him, Masurao stood to take on the red light from Mars. He said nothing, but Father Duo suspected he felt close to her, having shared the kidnapping experience with her. To the other side of Masurao, Triton stepped silently forward and caught the blue light of the Mercury powers.

Quatre stood back, arms crossed, eyes narrowed and face taught. There seemed to be a bubble around him made only stronger by what was happening. The more those around him sacrificed and gave, the more the blonde retreated into his shell of self-hatred and rage. Father Duo wanted very badly to heal this young man, but knew he couldn't. Only one thing could. The return of things to how they were, to how they must be again.

In a moment the four Inner Senshi were sagging in various stages of exhaustion on the ground, all looking pale and weak. The four men, on the other hand, stood tall and with something akin to pride. They all knew they had volunteered for something dangerous. If Wufei, Triton, and Masurao felt the same way Duo felt, however, he knew they didn't care.

“Come on, Quatre-kun.” Sailoruranus grabbed the boy, who yelled indignantly at the invasion, and steered him towards the door. Halfway there, she and Sailorneptune turned. “We'll also take the Prince home.” Her voice wavered but did not actually crack.

“Good.” Ami said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall. “Just don't . . . don't let Hotaru-chan see him without some warning.”

“I won't.”

Then the three of them left. The doors opened to allow them passage, then closed again once they were through. Only the eight were left, and four of them would have to move one while four of them would wait. Father Duo looked to Ami.

“What will happen if one of us is killed?” The prospect frightened him, but to his surprise, not as badly as it once had. “Will your power be returned, or will you be helpless?”

The woman bit her bottom lip, gave her friends a glance, then shook her head.

“I'm not sure, Duo-kun. I-I really don't know.”

He nodded, content with that answer since it was the only one she could offer.

“Good luck,” Minako said, smiling at them all.

“Be safe,” said Rei. She nodded to Masurao, something unspoken passing between the two.

“Get through these challenges. We're counting on you, and so is Usagi-chan.” Makoto looked as though she'd never forgive them if they failed. Duo imagined she wouldn't.

“Oh, NO pressure there, Makoto-chan!” Minako threw her arms in the air weakly, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. Makoto scowled. “Go on,” the blonde said gently, “Mako-chan may not be very subtle, but she's right. We're all counting on you.”

“We'll do our best,” Masurao promised quietly, “but that's no guarantee that our best will be good enough.”

“We will not fail.” Wufei glowered in Masurao's direction. “I give my word as an honorable man.”

Duo merely smiled and nodded. He didn't know what else to do or say, so he left it at that. He'd already surprised himself enough for one say. He didn't want to know what might come out of his mouth at that moment. Without that last word to give, he turned away from them and towards the statue of Queen Hecate and the door she guarded. His three companions turned with him.

They walked forward, through the doors when they opened, and into the dangerously unknown.

 

 

End Chapter Thirteen.