Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A New Future 1 - Things Change ❯ Memories of the Fall ( Chapter 2 )

This is an alternate history (both the world in general and the Senshi in particular) continuation for both Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2, set in a world with no space exploration, personal computers, cell phones, or anything else requiring a transistor. It is labeled hentai for the opening scene only (no lemons), and X for that scene and possible graphic violence later.

This was originally published by me under the name Anduril at Anime Addventures, with the only changes being a few corrections in spelling, punctuation, and a slightly contradictory scene. If you like the beginning of my story but think I've gone off the rails, or have your own ideas for a great branch-off, or think I'm taking too long to update and want to continue the story yourself, come to Anime Addventures and join in the fun!

I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Naoko Takeuchi, or anything in the GURPS Ogre and GURPS Tales of the Solar Patrol settings published by Steve Jackson Games. Everything else is mine.

 

 

A short cute blond six-year-old girl dressed in a luxurious, if currently more than a little grubby, blue and gold pantsuit pouted as she walked between the trees lining the curving park path toward the side entrance to the palace. Looking up at the tall, slim redheaded female that had been one of her personal bodyguards all her life, she whined, “Toshiko, it's not fair, all the other kids get to stay at the playground!”

Toshiko chuckled as she glanced fondly at her charge before resuming her intent scanning of the grounds they walked through, the glasses she wore outlining each source of magic with the color revealing the type. “I know it doesn't seem fair, Princess, and you don't get to see some of those kids very often, but the party tonight is at least partly to celebrate your birthday, it's already been going on for awhile, and the star of the party should at least show up!”

Princess Yasuko sighed and nodded. “I know, I know, `the ruling family has a responsibility to be accessible to its people'. I'll be good. I was just having so much fun!”

“I know, Princess,” Amaya, the bulky brunette bodyguarding Yasuko's left side responded, “but there will be other days. Besides, you might actually have some fun at the adults' party, too.” She laughed as she sensed the disgusted look her young charge sent her way. “No, it isn't likely. But it won't happen at all if you go in determined not to enjoy yourself. And your mother will be there.”

Yasuko immediately brightened and started to rush ahead, then paused as the curve of the path finally revealed the palace in all its pure white ethereal beauty. She gazed at the multi-spired building she'd called home all her short life, then lifted her eyes higher to stare at the shining orb of Earth in all its chaotic glory. She thought of the snippets of conversation she'd overheard here and there as long as she could remember. I don't care what everyone says about how the Earthers don't like us much, someday I'm going to go there! Big sis did and she got through it all right, and I will too. Then with an inward chuckle,Maybe I'll even find a boyfriend like she did. All the mush looks silly but everyone says it's a lot of fun, and they can't all be wrong, right?

Suddenly, Toshiko and Amaya both stiffened in shock as an alert sounded through the earbuds each wore, then Yasuko whirled as a huge explosion went off behind them. “That was at the playground!” she yelled even as she started to run back down the path they'd just come up. She didn't get three steps before being swept off her feet by Toshiko, who took off running toward the palace entrance with her gun out and pointed toward the door even as Amaya somehow kept up with the two while practically running sideways watching behind them as other explosions went off farther away. Yasuko was pounding on Toshiko's chest, Toshiko's reflex armor softening the light blows to the point they felt like taps, and kicking her feet trying uselessly to get her bodyguard to drop her. “That was the playground, my friends are back there!”

“I know, but we are under attack and you have duties, Princess,” Toshiko responded harshly, “and your first duty is to let us get you to safety so your mother and her people can concentrate on repelling those monsters killing your subjects! Others whose job it is to risk their lives will look after your friends.” She didn't add that from the size of the explosion there wouldn't be much left to look after.

Yasuko stopped fighting, and after a few more seconds of a bumpy ride as Toshiko's passenger said dully, “All right, I'll be good. Put me down, you'll be able to protect me better if you aren't carrying me.”

Toshiko risked a suspicious glance downward, but on finding only dull resignation in her charge's face nodded and paused long enough to set Yasuko on her feet by the side door. With Amaya continuing to cover their rear, Toshiko motioned Yasuko further to the side then stroked the control sensor and as the door slid open whirled so that only her head and the arm holding her pistol were in the corridor, tracking for targets that weren't there. Immediately, the three were inside, door closed, and headed down the corridor at a trot, Amaya again moving sideways so she could cover the empty corridor behind them, both bodyguards listening through their earbuds to the reports of explosions throughout the city. Then the first wave of invaders hit.

Toshiko shouted in shock as her glasses flashed pure light straight into her eyes. “Eyes front!” she shouted even as she threw herself to the floor, bringing her charge down with her. Amaya whirled and gasped in shock even as she brought her pistol on target and a pulse of energy blew a fist-sized hole through the chest of the green-scaled vaguely female-shaped humanoid with huge curved sword-like blades in the place of hands just beyond the two on the floor. The figure collapsed, and instantly started to degenerate into sludge.

“What was that thing!?” Amaya asked breathlessly, even as she scanned both directions of the corridor.

Toshiko rubbed at her eyes, then gazed at the rapidly deteriorating corpse through the sparkles obscuring her vision. “I don't know, I've never heard of anything like it. Oh, you're going to need to take front. When whatever it is teleported in, the flash blinded me.”

“Uh, what flash?” Princess Yasuko asked.

As Toshiko stood and helped the princess to her feet, she asked, “You didn't see a flash?”

“No, just a weird blackish spiral kind of like our galaxy for a second, then that thing was in front of us.”

“Odd,” Toshiko pondered. “Then the flash must have been from my glasses, probably a reaction of some sort to an unknown type of magic. Let the scientists work that out later, we need to get moving. Amaya, until my eyes finish clearing up you'll need to take front. And lose the glasses.”

Amaya immediately took off her own glasses. “That's going to make it difficult to detect any magical threats.”

“Can't be helped — it's going to take a few minutes for my eyes to finish clearing up, we can't risk you being blinded right now, too.”

“Right,” Amaya agreed, then moved ahead of the other two and the three set off again down the corridor at a trot, Toshiko now the one constantly glancing to their rear.

 

They made it through several rooms and corridors, bare minutes away from the bodyguard reinforcements moving as fast as possible to link up with them, when the next attack struck. Amaya was again at the back covering the rear, when another of the deformed green things charged out of a door the other two had just passed, thrusting a bladed “hand” toward Amaya's gut. Amaya instinctively swung her arm to knock the attack aside, but her arm simply rebounded from the blade and she gasped as it plunged through her reflex armor, into her stomach, and out the center of her back. She felt her legs go numb and collapsed even as the gun in her other hand blew three holes through the stomach, chest and head of the thing.

Even as it collapsed and started to degrade the same way as the first, Toshiko and Yasuko were beside Amaya, the princess kneeling beside her bodyguard and helping her sit up while her partner quickly checked the room her attacker had come out of and finding no others then taking over scanning both directions of the corridor. “How are you?” Toshiko asked her partner.

“I can't feel or move my legs, that thing must have gotten my spine. It's going to take awhile for that to regenerate,” Amaya responded even as she killed another of the things that came around the last corner they'd come around themselves less than a minute earlier.

“Not a problem, partner,” Toshiko said. “Our reinforcements will be here in a few minutes. We'll just wait here, safer for all of us that way.”

Another minute passed, Yasuko sitting beside Amaya and Toshiko standing, the two bodyguards facing opposite ways down the corridor. Then both adults went white as they heard a firefight break out deeper into the palace. A few minutes later they listened grimly to word of the ambush of their reinforcements, the survivors pinned in place, unable to either advance or withdraw. Amaya sighed. “That takes care of that. You two can't stay here, you'll have to take a detour and make your own way in.”

Toshiko nodded. “Good luck, Amaya. Come on, Yasuko, we have to move.”

“What!?” the princess shouted. “We can't just leave her here, she'll be killed!”

“We don't have a choice, Princess. Amaya's been my partner as long as you've been alive, do you think I want to leave her? But she won't be able to move for at least another fifteen minutes and there's a huge number of those things just a few minutes down the corridor, at most. If we stay we all die — you die. What will that do to your mother and sister?”

Yasuko's shoulders slumped, then she nodded and fiercely hugged her wounded lifelong bodyguard as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Goodbye, Amaya.”

“Goodbye, Yasuko, it's been a pleasure guarding you. Take care of my partner for me?”

“Sure,” Yasuko said tremulously, then stood. The two bodyguards clasped arms for a few moments, then Toshiko and Yasuko headed back down the way they had come. A few seconds after they turned the corner they heard renewed firing coming from behind them.

 

A half hour later, an exhausted Yasuko collapsed to her knees. Toshiko glanced at the child, then resumed scanning the latest corridor. “We're almost there, Yasuko, just catch your breath for a minute and one last push.” Yasuko nodded even as she gasped for breath, then gave a hoarse scream as she saw the now too-familiar black swirls. Toshiko whirled and fired, blowing sludge out the back of the green-scaled thing that had just materialized. Suddenly, a blade-hand slammed into her upper back, through a lung, and out her chest. Reaching across her stomach, she fired her pistol behind her, then collapsed as the fall of the thing she'd just killed yanked the blade-hand out of her chest.

Yasuko was beside her in an instant, trying to staunch the blood pouring from the wound in Toshiko's chest, but Toshiko pushed her back and pulled out a tiny pistol and placed it in on of the princess's bloodstained hands. Coughing up blood, she managed to gasp out, “I'm done, Yasuko, go — now!”

“Toshiko, I can't just —”

“You have to, please!” Toshiko begged in a hoarse whisper, then coughed up more blood when she tried to continue.

Yasuko stared at her for a long moment as fresh tears poured down, then nodded. “All right, Toshiko. I love you.” She kissed her lifelong bodyguard and friend on the forehead, then turned and began running down the corridor with all the energy she had left. Turning, the corner she ran toward the door ten yards away.

Suddenly, the world seemed to go crazy, spinning uncontrollably. She felt the back of her head bounce off something, and the spinning came to a stop. Help, mommy! she screamed in her mind as she caught sight of another blade-handed monster stepping out of the room she'd just passed behind her collapsing, headless body as blood fountaining from her neck stump sprayed a broad line down the wall.

Everything went black.

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

Ranma jerked upright with a throat-ripping scream, her bare breasts bouncing with the abrupt motion, then sat gasping for breath as her desperate gaze recognized the Furinkan High School grounds. What ... I was on the moon ... Toshiko and Amaya ... but Happosai ... Happosai! Ranma looked down at the smoking corpse between her spread legs, charred except for the wrist of the hand still in ... desperately, Ranma thrust herself backwards and the unmarked hand popped out of her. Immediately, she fell on her side and curled into a ball, wracked by body-shaking sobs. Mommy ...