Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Reflections of Ruin ❯ Reflections of Ruin ( Chapter 18 )

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

She fell. Through fire and darkness, she fell. She could feel His presence burning like a star in the sky, but that was far away. Something was crushing her. Something was covering her. She fell through the floor, and the floor stood firm. Her mind flowed in a thousand different directions at once. Distantly, she was aware of rising to her feet, the rubble of the statue of the Messiah of Silence tumbling off of her, but it was far from the center of her awareness.

Nabiki Tendo was once again fighting for her very existence.

Despair had opened doors that ought not to have been opened, and the inhumanity of the mind that she had merged with poured into her fortress of Self like a whirlwind.

Everything she had tried to do. Everything she had sacrificed. It had all failed. Dad was dead. Serenity had tried to heal him and the healing had only destroyed what it touched. Then Ranma had finished the job. Ranma.

She had failed. Utterly failed. Nabiki Tendo had gambled and lost, and now the world would pay.

Her body mutated visibly as she writhed in agony on the bed of rubble and shattered stone; terrible gaping mouths opened and closed across her flesh, her hair fused into slime-covered tentacles with terrible jagged teeth, her eyes burst and reformed again and again, and long streaks of gore-filled tears poured down her cheeks. Her hands itched; the itching became a ripping, a tearing, and two mouths with long distended tongues and razor-sharp teeth split open where her palms had been. Her wings stretched and billowed in silent wind, yet for all this, she did not scream. She couldn't afford the distraction.

Her very self was on the line. Again.

For even worse than the pain of mutation and the despair of having utterly failed was the sheer Hunger that rose up in her breast. The Need. The Need to rut and consume and defile. She knew that it went back to the Thing which had sired the creature that she'd merged with. The Thing which she had become.

And she knew it's name. She knew it's name. In spite of herself, in spite of knowing better than to speak the name of such a thing, even ten thousand years dead, the words were half-formed on her lips before she could stop herself:
"Y'Gol..."

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Reflections of Ruin
by P.H. Wise
A Ranma/Sailor Moon/Cthulhu Mythos Crossover Fukufic

Chapter 18 – Reflections of Ruin

Disclaimer: I don’t own Ranma. I don’t own Sailor Moon. Please don’t sue me. I’m not doing this for profit.

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Akane stared up helplessly at Sailor Saturn as, high above, Pharaoh 90 continued his descent. If she had looked up, with the light of her Father's great eye pouring down on them mingled with the fires of reentry, the Thing would have looked like a large, bright red star.

All that she had done under the influence of her Father flashed before her mind.
She saw Ryouga screaming as the essence of a Daimon poured down his throat, transforming him into... something else. She watched as the humanity faded from his eyes. Watched as her connection to him snapped into place, and she knew him - what he had become.

She saw Ryouga splattering into a thousand pieces before the combined assault of the Soldiers of the Outer Solar System. Gore spraying everywhere.

She saw herself lying to him. Making him think that Ranma had raped her.

She saw Ranma's grief-stricken face. She felt once again the need to BE Ranma. To possess her body in the same way that she possessed her own. It all made sense now, in retrospect. Her possessiveness. Her jealousy. Not that it excused any of it. Had it all been a lie? Had it all been because of her nature? Was there anything she had that wasn't because of what she was?

She remembered Mount Phoenix. She remembered her own helplessness. She remembered Ranma's words of love.

She saw the consumption of a thousand souls to feed her appetite, a thousand souls to summon the Thing that had spawned her.

She saw what she had done to her own mother.

The sheer Presence of her Father high above beat down oppressively on her mind, but this time it found no purchase. Just as grief, horror, and despair had weakened Nabiki, so had it strengthened Akane. She would not let it happen again. Never again.

She screamed, but no sound came forth. Three times she screamed silent screams, three times her voice failed to sound.

Her muteness broke.

The fourth scream was full-voiced, and contained within it was the death of everything she had ever loved. Her vision faded in and out, each pulsing from dark to light in time with the throbbing of her heart.

She felt arms around her.

Akane looked up, her whole body wracked with great, shuddering sobs.

Saturn's arms, wrapping her up in a fierce embrace. She met Saturn's gaze. Ranma's gaze. Ranma's gaze, shimmering with tears and love and fear. "Ranma..." she said.

"Come back, tomboy," Ranma whispered into her hair.

The intensity of grief faded. The horror faded. The guilt faded. They were still there, but they paled to the importance of this: there, at the end of everything, looking into the eyes of Sailor Saturn, Akane felt... loved.

Loved.

-----------------

At length, Sailor Saturn rose to her feet. She squeezed Akane's hand. She didn't need to say 'I love you:' Akane knew.

Above them, Pharaoh 90's bulbous form shone in the night sky like a great red star, growing larger and larger as it descended.

... it was writhing.

Saturn hefted the Silence Glaive.

Akane looked up, black star emblazoned on her forehead, long, dark hair fanning out behind her like a cloak. It hung limply now, utterly inert. Not even the wind touched it, held as it was in total, unnatural stillness. "My father comes," she said, and her voice was filled with resignation.

The flames of reentry dissipated around Pharaoh 90's great bulk, and its horrible mass unfurled in the skies above the remnants of Minato-ku.

Mars stood forth. She had seen this before. She met Saturn's gaze. "Saturn, no! PLEASE! I know it looks dark, but you can't destroy the whole world!"

Saturn met Mars’s desperate gaze, and slowly lowered the Silence Glaive. “Find me another way,” she said.

Mars looked to Usagi, and Usagi nodded.

"Gather round, minna," the Queen said. "We're going to stop this monster once and for all."

One by one, each of Neo-Queen Serenity's Guardian Senshi gathered round her, hands joined. They stood in a circle, Usagi, Rei, Minako, Makoto, Ami. A moment later, Mamoru joined them.

Light sprang up around them all at once.

"VENUS CRYSTAL POWER!" Venus chanted, the white light around her flaring golden like the morning of the world.

"MERCURY STAR POWER!" Mercury's own light shifted blue.

"MARS CRYSTAL POWER!" Fiery light sprang up around Sailor Mars, and her countenance was the very image of the goddess of war.

"JUPITER CRYSTAL POWER!" Lightning crackled; the green power of Wood mingled with the power of Zeus's thunderbolts joined the greater whole.

Bits of debris began to float up into the air as power roiled off of the figures in the circle.

Endymion held open his hand, and a brilliant, shining golden gem manifested there within. "Golden Crystal Power," he whispered. The power of the Earth flowed through him, lighting up all around him as a gentle golden aura.

"MOON COSMIC POWER!" Usagi cried, her aura no longer pink, but now a brilliant, pure white.

As one, the five goddesses and one god broke contact with one another, power whirling around them, each pointing their cupped hands towards the descending bulk of Pharaoh 90. And as one they incanted, "SAILOR PLANET ATTACK!"

Streams of nearly unimaginable power flowed out from the group, one for each participant. Beams of brilliant gold, blue, green, red, and white joined in their cupped hands for a split second. Then a tremendous blast of multicoloured energy shot directly upwards, straight for Pharaoh 90.

From the center of the black, writhing mass came a note deeper and crueler than the foundations of the Earth. Terrible red energy flowed down from the Great Eye of Pharaoh 90 and met the combined efforts of Serenity's court midway to its target. Met... and repelled.

The eyes of each Guardian Senshi widened.

The red pulse of energy flowed downwards onto them. There was a terrible flash, a crack like thunder, and roiling sense of Incomprehensible Other.

Each let out a scream of pain as they flew into the air. There they remained, floating several meters off the floor, gravity itself undone around them as the rules of the ordered universe retreated before the sheer alien otherness of Pharaoh 90's power.

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Pharaoh 90 hovered now only a few hundred meters above Mugen Gakuen, vast tentacles flailing about its body, its single great eye bathing the whole roof in its malevolent red glow.

The Guardian Senshi had been defeated: the Outer Senshi would now show their quality.

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto each nodded. Words were unnecessary.

"DEEP SUBMERGE!" Neptune cried out, sending a ringed sphere of aquamarine energy up to splash harmlessly against Pharaoh 90's writhing carapace.

The eye shifted to her, and for a brief moment, she felt the full force of Pharaoh 90's awareness beating down upon her mind.

"Dead Scream," Sailor Pluto whispered. A moment later, her own ringed sphere of purple energy detonated equally harmlessly against Pharaoh 90.

The eye's gaze fell upon her.

But it had not noticed Uranus, who, even as the other two fired off their attacks, leaped upwards, space sword in hand, taking advantage of the altered conditions of local gravity. Up she soared, her short hair flowing in the wind. Up, up, and up; when Pharaoh 90 finally noticed her, it was too late.

"SPACE SWORD BLASTER!" she screamed. Intensely bright light blossomed around the blade of her sword, and there, a speck before the vast bulk of the Great Old One, she planted her blade in the Thing's great, central eye.

It sank in with a sickening splurch, and there was an explosion of light and power as her power detonated inside the eye of Pharaoh 90.

Gore rained down on her, and upon the rooftop, and for a moment, all was silent.

Then a sound came forth from the globular mass like the crack of doom, filled with such deep, pulsing hatred that Uranus's heart nearly failed her then and there.

The great eye dimmed, but all across Pharaoh 90's body, eyes glowing with brilliant, malevolent red light sprouted open, and every single one of them fixed upon Sailor Uranus.

A thousand pulses of red energy shot out of the globular mass and into Uranus, flinging her down into the roof with the force of a freight train. She cratered massively at the center of what had been the summoning circle, and the pulses of energy followed her down. Her body jerked and writhed as the pulses seared and burned everywhere they touched, searing through flesh and bone and tissue like the fires of Hell itself.

"URANUS!" Neptune screamed, rushing to her lover's side.

She was still alive. Her body was utterly ruined, but she was still alive, bones gleaming in Pharaoh 90's light, her ribcage halfway exposed, the flesh cauterized all around it, her hair burned to ash, her flesh burned down to the skull on the right side of her face, her eyes wide and staring as she took breath after shuddering breath.

Neptune stared down in horror at the broken form of her lover, and Usagi and all the still floating Guardian Senshi did the same.

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Nabiki rose to her feet, her body mutated almost beyond recognition. Her eyes were bleeding sockets, yet she found that she could still see. She could taste through her hands. Through all of her mouths. She staggered out of the pile of rubble and looked upon the Guardian Senshi.

Bloodied. Battered.

She watched as Usagi gently settled down onto the ground.

She watched as Neptune wept over the ruined form of Uranus.

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Presently, she realized that her mouths were babbling, screaming, laughing. She clamped them all shut and shuddered.

"Is this the way the world ends?" she murmured, not expecting an answer. Each of her mouths echoed the question, a chorus of her own voice, each altered subtly by the shape of the mouth, the tongues, the teeth, but each unmistakably her own.

She remembered. She remembered the end of her Father on Nemesis, so long ago. She didn't want to. She didn't want to feel what he had done to everything that had lived there. More than anything else, she didn't want to like it so much. She remembered, nonetheless. She remembered how Sailor Saturn had brought down the Silence Glaive upon her body. Her father's body. Ending Y'Golonac forever.

History repeats itself. History is cyclical. She looked upon Sailor Saturn. She looked upon Akane.

This is the way the world ends.

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Far away, at the Nekohanten, Cologne peered out the window into the ruined streets of Nerima. She, Mousse, and Shampoo had fought long and hard to keep this place safe, and it was here that the last survivors of the ward had gathered. Outside, Things gibbered and writhed in the darkness. Things which had learned to walk which ought to crawl.

She had never felt her age as deeply as she did here, now.

Her aged body was scored with wounds, and Shampoo had fared not much better.

Mousse lay bleeding to death in the corner. Kasumi was tending to his injuries, but as much as she had learned from Doctor Tofu, she was no doctor. She could do little save make him comfortable.

"They stop attacking," Shampoo said in broken Japanese, her voice hoarse and strained. "Too, too good. Maybe they go away? Maybe we convince them we too much trouble?"

Cologne shook her head. "No. Can't you sense it, child? We have reached the hour of doom. Son-in-law is fighting for us now..." She trailed off. "I feel... a star is dying. A star is being born." Wearily, she pogoed over to one of the few intact tables remaining in the restaurant and slid down into the seat opposite of Nodoka.

Nodoka grasped a cup of tea between trembling hands. She gave a start as Cologne sat down next to her and spilled hot tea on the table. "Oh," she said. "Oh, Elder. It's you."

Cologne poured herself a cup of tea and took a long, slow sip.

Nodoka sat silently beside her, staring into her half-full teacup between trembling hands, watching the curls of steam rising from it.

"This isn't how I imagined meeting my end," Cologne said. "But there is worse company than this to die in. Your son is a credit to you, Saotome-san."

Nodoka looked up, meeting the Elder's gaze with her own, and inwardly, Cologne winced. Nodoka's eyes were dull. Lifeless. She looked like a woman looking upon the end of everything.

She was.

A little bit of life returned to her at the mention of Ranma.

Try as she might, Cologne found that she didn't have the heart to say anything else. Everything was tumbling down into the abyss. Nodoka had seen the death of her husband, and the death of her husband's best friend. The world in all likelihood was ending outside the door of the restaurant, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Three hundred years had never weighed so heavily upon her as they did in that moment. They were past the usefulness of words.

So there they sat in silence, at the very end, sharing a cup of tea. The Amazon elder and the mother of the boy who Cologne had wanted to make her heir.

Mousse coughed wetly, and Kasumi made a shushing noise.

"Rest," the Tendo girl whispered, tears falling from her eyes. "You've fought long enough."

Mousse looked about, seeking Shampoo but not finding her; his glasses sat unused atop his head.

Through tears and despair and horror, Kasumi's compassion shone like the face of God. And in that moment, when all hope was lost, she began to sing a gentle lullaby. For Mousse. For Nerima. For the whole world.

Mousse sank peacefully down into his bedding and smiled. "Shampoo..." he whispered, and died.

Across the room, Shampoo blinked fiercely through her tears.

The only sounds were the sobbing of the refugees, and of Kasumi's slow, gentle, sad lullaby.

Cologne had never felt so old.

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Atop the remains of Mugen Gakuen, the Senshi stared in horror at the ruined body of one of their own. Uranus breathed deep, ragged, gasping breaths, kept alive only by her magic when by all rights she should be dead.

Neptune wept, her tears falling gently onto the body of her lover.

"Saturn," Pluto said, her voice full of weary resignation. "It's time."

A thrill of horror shot through Usagi's body at those words. "Pluto," she said, "We CAN'T. Not now. Not after all this."

Saturn kissed the top of Akane's head and rose wearily, Silence Glaive in hand. "Have you found another way?" she asked. Her voice was flat. Empty.

Usagi's thoughts raced. She could try the Ginzuishou, but she had already combined its power with everyone else's for the Sailor Planet attack, and that had had no effect. But there had to be a way! This couldn't be the end! They had a future to look forward to! Chibi-Usa was proof of that. "Chibi-Usa..." she said.

Pluto shook her head sadly. "The future is not set, my Queen. For us. Here, now, there is no fate but what we make. Knowing what might wait for us can give us hope, but there are no guarantees. Not when you're here, within the moments."

Usagi met Pluto's gaze, and for a moment she felt as though she were falling into the depths of those haunted, timeless eyes. She felt as though she could see the whole history of the world moving towards this moment. Here. Now.

This ending.

Sailor Saturn raised the Silence Glaive.

"No," Usagi whispered. "I won't let it end like this."

Above, Pharaoh 90 glowed brighter and brighter. It was becoming hard to look at the bulk of the great beast; it shone like a red sun in the skies above Juuban.

Somewhere in the south pacific, R'ley rose from the water depths, bringing with it the king of dreams: dread Cthulhu had awakened at last to challenge the might of Pharaoh 90.

In that moment, the words of Queen Serenity, of Selene, faint but clear, rang out in the din: “Contained within is your birthright, Princess Serenity: the last part of your power which could not transmigrate into your new life. Here it waits. The time will come when you must drink it to the lees.”

Filled with sudden hope, Usagi held out her hand. A ball of light flared, then coalesced into the shape of the Holy Grail.

It shone like the dawn.

"Minna," Usagi whispered. "Believe in me." She raised the cup to her lips, and she drank. It was bitter, and it burned as it flowed down her throat, but she drank.

She drank it to the lees.

Everything changed.

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Pharaoh 90 was gone. The whole city was gone. Everything was gone. Princess Serenity stood on the balcony overlooking Mare Serenitatis. The sea rippled gently, and the Earth rose in the distance.

This was not the Dreamlands. It didn't feel the same. It felt like...

Home. Home, in a way that no place on Earth ever had.

"You could stay here, you know," Selene said from behind her.

Princess Serenity turned, and blinked in surprise. There was Selene - Queen Serenity - dressed in the formal gown of the Queen of the Silver Millennium.

"Stay?" she asked, confused.

Selene nodded. "You would be safe here. There's no pain. No fear. No death. You could have everything you've ever wanted. Your friends, too."

"How did I get here?" Princess Serenity asked. "I was... I was at Mugen Gakuen. We were fighting. Where is this?"

Selene smiled gently. "Here is your home. Your home and the home of your court. This is the Celestial Realm. The home of the gods. Like you."

Princess Serenity stared at Selene. "But... why does it look like the Moon Kingdom?"

"We thought you would be more comfortable in these surroundings," Selene replied. "Now that you've Ascended, there's no need for you to worry about the Mortal World anymore. You can stay here forever. It's where you were always meant to be, after all. Where your mother came from, long ago."

"You're not...?"

"No."

Princess Serenity felt deeply, deeply troubled. She looked out at the Earth rising over the horizon. "What about them?" she asked.

Selene shrugged. "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Humanity's time has come and gone, Serenity."

Princess Serenity looked towards the door to her chamber, and beyond it was a far green country under a swift sunrise that tugged at her heartstrings like nothing before in her life. Everything she saw there was familiar, everything had an earthly equivalent, yet this land was so much more: more awful, more divine. She knew that this was where she belonged.

And yet...

"I can't," she whispered, and came back to herself. She was Usagi, and she wore the clothing of a Japanese school girl.

Selene arched a delicate eyebrow. "Are you sure? Your mother had this same choice, once. I tell you now what we told her then: if you choose to leave this place behind, you will not be allowed to return. You will know grief, and pain, and suffering, and all that life in the mortal world brings with it, save what is prevented by your nature."

Usagi fell silent, staring out the door at the far green country. Towards the sunrise. Towards the faintest echo, there, of the Love which moves the sun and the stars.

She let out a long, deep breath. "I'm sure," she said. "I can't leave humanity to die. I can't leave the Earth to be destroyed. I have... I have..."

Her room vanished. Selene vanished. The far green country vanished. Usagi opened her eyes, and she stood once more beneath the writhing mass of Pharaoh 90. Power suffused her being. Her hair became as silver, every last trace of blonde vanishing forever. "I have people who are counting on me!"

The crescent moon flared brilliantly upon her forehead, and in that moment, she knew what she had to do.

"Lend me your power..." she whispered, even as Sailor Saturn walked to the edge of the roof. She wouldn't stop Saturn from bringing down the Glaive. She knew that now. But maybe... maybe...

Red blasts of power began to flare out from Pharaoh 90's body, and everywhere they touched became Pharaoh 90. The crater that had been the Minato ward began to writhe, vast tentacles bursting forth from the ground.

"Usagi," Venus whispered, and the gem in her tiara glowed golden.
"Usagi," each of the Guardian Senshi said in turn, their gems glowing with gentle light.

Endymion felt the tug. The request. Usagi needed his power. He stepped to her side, put an arm around her, and gave her everything he had.

"MOON ETERNAL POWER...!" Usagi cried with everything that was within her.

Sailor Saturn brought down the Silence Glaive.

END CHAPTER 18

Author’s note: Many thanks to Sunshine Temple for his useful, insightful comments and criticism throughout the writing of this story – especially in these last few chapters.