Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A New Future 2 - First Blood ❯ Still a Family ( Chapter 27 )

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 the occasional word choice to make things clearer. 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, 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.

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Chibi-Usa smiled happily to herself as she walked through the small carnival arm in arm with her tall, dark-haired sort-of-father on one side and her bubbly, blonde sort-of-mother on the other, pink cotton candy in one hand and blue cotton candy in the other. Finally, she had gotten some time with her past (not to say prehistory) mother and father — even if it turned out they weren't actually her mother and father. Her “father” had had his job keeping him busy most days, of course, but the princess from the future had expected to be able to spend more time with her Baka-Mama in the run up to the final battle.

It hadn't worked out that way, thanks to Yasuko's sudden awakening. Usa understood why Usagi had asked her and Hotaru to befriend the boy-turned-girl — if there was anyone that needed a friend that wasn't trying to either marry her or kill her, it was Ranma — but it had taken up practically all her time that wasn't devoted to schooling she didn't need and the accompanying club activities, along with the occasional (but increasing) monster attacks. And then, when Ranma and Akane took themselves off to the mountain highlands and it looked as if she'd finally get some time with her “mother,” that ditzy girl — well, woman, now — had started spending all her time when hubby wasn't home in Nerima. Usa had actually been able to spend more time with her “grandmother”! In the end Hotaru had put her foot down, making sure her friend had an evening clear, apologetically asking Auntie Nodoka to stay home (something instantly agreed to by the woman quickly becoming like another mother to the two teenagers — a mixed blessing), finding a carnival to enjoy, and calling Mamoru and Usagi and asking if they'd like to spend some quality time with their “daughter.” Speaking of which ...

The pink-haired girl turned her head to look over her shoulder, making sure her friend was still with them. “Hey, Firefly, you sure you're okay back there?” she called to their silent shadow. The dark-haired girl nodded, smiling happily. “I'm sure,” she said so quietly Usa could barely hear her over the noise of the crowd around them, then took a bite out of her own blue cotton candy as Usa faced forward again to grin up at her “mother” smiling down at her before taking another bite from each of her own.

Usa looked around contentedly as they joined the line for the next ride. Sure, the carnival didn't match 30th century standards with all that magitech could do, or even those of the 20th century Disneylands and their competitors. But she'd had fun watching Mamo-chan try to win her some prizes (he'd done his best, but he was no Ranma ... ah, well) and poking fun at Baka-Mama when they'd had to talk the braided blonde onto some of the rides (yes, the woman can save the world multiple times, and still be terrified by a simple high-speed loop-the-loop, and hadn't the pinkette had fun insinuating just that!), and her best friend had been by her side through the night, smiling with enjoyment even if she didn't join in the ribbing — much. Yes, in spite of the occasionally bloody fight with the latest war monster and the upcoming battle looming over them, this was the perfect —

Usa mentally slapped down that thought, then did her best to beat it to death as she tensed, waiting, waiting, minutes ticked by ... nothing, whew! She turned to a Hotaru eyeing her worriedly, opened her mouth to reassure her that all was well, and froze when she felt her communicator in her pocket vibrate at the same time the other three jerked slightly. Usa raised her eyes to the heavens. “Dammit, couldn't you have let it go, just once!” she shouted to the nighttime skies, garnering odd looks from her companions (and assorted strangers around her before they politely looked away).

Mamo-chan took hold of her elbow. “Come on,” he said quietly, and the four abandoned their place in line and hurried away, around a corner between another two rides, and finally found a private spot behind the restooms. All four pulled out their communicators, the screens lighting up to reveal the blue hair-framed face of Ami. “Sorry to break up your fun time, but the Mercury Computer's picking up a new incursion,” she said without preamble, “and the four of you're practically on top of it, it's about two hundred yards to the west.”

“We're on it. I know Neptune and Uranus are busy tonight, are you, Mars or Pluto joining us?” Mamoru asked.

Ami shook her head. “Rei has a school event, she doesn't have her communicator with her tonight. And I'm at a school year's end party, too far north — by the time I could get there, it'll be long over. As for Pluto, who knows?”

“Right, I suppose the four of us will have to do,” Mamoru said with a sigh. “We'll call when it's done.” Putting away his communicator he turned to the companions. “Well, my ladies fair, it seems it is up to us.”

The other three nodded and summoned their henshin wands, and within moments the darkness was lit up as their normal clothes vanished to be replaced by the sailor fukus. Transformation complete, Sailor Moon turned to find her husband still in his normal garb eyeing her appreciatively. “I can never get enough of that show,” he murmured. As Moon blushed and the two teenagers giggled, he quickly transformed into his own battle garb, the black armor and cape of Prince Endymion.

“The Rose Knight rides again!” Chibi-Moon quipped.

Endymion grimaced. “I still wish you hadn't said that loud enough for the cameras to pick up,” he complained to his wife as he drew his sword.

“Ah but it's such a romantic name!” she gushed as the other girls' giggles turned into laughter, then sobered. “Let's go.” Endymion nodded as Saturn hefted the Silence Glaive, and the four ran toward the first of the screams.

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Chibi-Moon concluded once again that she really didn't like fights at night. Even when they were taking place somewhere as well-lit as the carnival, there were still shadows all around that could hide anything, and the bright lights shining down made it difficult at best to see anything that might be lurking in the dark above them.

But however poorly those lights stood in for the Sun, they were perfectly adequate at showing the latest incursion as the Soldiers of Love and Justice arrived at the scene, a central square surrounded by booths. When the four had passed through a few minutes earlier it had been packed with people trying out various games or queuing up for treats. Now, the square was empty except for bodies of men, women and children scattered about on the ground amidst the drinks and food people had discarded as they ran — and the snakes. Huge snakes, much bigger than the boa constrictors Chibi-Moon had seen at the zoo she'd visited once with Hotaru. But they apparently had the same feeding habits as constrictors, several of them already wrapped around bodies and others maneuvering to circle around more.

Even as they entered the square, one of the snakes already wrapped around a man squeezed, and blood spurted from the mouth of its victim. A few yards away, a woman began to scream as a snake coiled around her. Instantly, Saturn and Endymion charged forward, sword and glaive slashing, and the magically sharpened blades sliced through their targets to sweep off a pair of snake heads.

The two whirled to look over the square, separating the open area between them without a word, and triaged the snakes by level of threat, attacking the ones already coiled around people that hadn't yet killed their meals. More snake heads rolled free, blood so red it was almost black spurting from stumps to pool on the concrete. As Saturn and Endymion dealt with the snakes, Moon and Chibi-Moon darted around them to pull people away from the giant constrictors toward the edge of the field, Moon concentrating on the adults and Chibi-Moon on the children.

Even as the pink-haired teenager from the future pulled a little blonde girl out of the way, her mind was racing — something about the situation was not right. These are supposed to be biological weapons? Sure, they're dangerous if you can't move, but that's it — these aren't war machines, they're a terrorist strike. And they don't seem to be trying to either avoid or attack Hota-chan or Mamo-chan, so what knocked out all these people? She took a closer look at the child as she pulled her into a narrow alley between booths. The child's eyes were open, but wandering, unfocused, and there was some kind of slimy substance coating the lower part of her face....

Chibi-Moon stood up, eyes darting from side to side, searching the shadows of the alley for the other creature that had to be around somewhere ... nothing. She was turning back toward the square with a sigh of relief when she caught a slight fluctuation in the light, a whisper of sound. Whipping around, she looked up to see another snake, much smaller, ribbed wings on each side, diving toward her out of the dark above the lights, fanged mouth gaping. A stream of pink hearts smashed into the thing, shearing away a wing from one side and sending it spiraling to the ground, but not before it coughed and a glob of mucus splashed into Chibi-Moon's face.

She frantically wiped at her face with one hand, gagging and spitting the get the foul taste out of her mouth, as she sent another stream of hearts to turn the snake's head into a red smear on the concrete. Threat eliminated, she whirled around toward the alley entranceway to the square only to stagger as the world suddenly went out of focus, seeming to rush toward her then withdraw, and she felt as if Earth's gravity had suddenly halved in strength. She managed two steps forward before suddenly wobbly knees spilled her limp body on the alley floor. She didn't feel a thing as her head bounced on the concrete.

As Chibi-Moon lay there in a timeless haze, she saw the canvas wall of the booth she was disinterestedly staring at ripple upward as the head of one of the boa constrictors on steroids pushed through underneath. The head pointed at her for a moment, tongue flickering in and out, then it slid forward toward her, more and more of its massive body following. It slithered alongside her and slowly coiled itself around her yard by yard.

As she felt more and more of her body caressed by the snake's smooth scales, the pink-haired teenager felt the hazy unreality she was sunk into shiver. There was something unpleasant — something dangerous….

Then as the snake's coils circled her arms and she felt her shoulders lift from the pavement, her drugged stupor shattered as she remembered a man crushed, blood spurting from his mouth. Sucking as deep a breath as the coils circling her chest allowed, she screamed as loudly as she could even as her breath gushed out when the snake began to slowly squeeze. “DADDY — !” Then her breath was gone and she couldn't get it back and she felt her ribs creak as the pressure continued to grow, then she was desperately trying to shriek as her hips cracked, rib after rib snapped, she felt something rupture in her abdomen, and her last sight as the black pain rolled over her was her father's dark armor and flashing blade.

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The last several months had been incredibly frustrating for Sailor Moon because, as with her little sister, she'd been sitting out more battles than she'd joined. But unlike Ranma, it hadn't been because she wasn't needed, but because she was mostly useless. Unlike her fellow Senshi, most of her attacks were targeted at magical threats and the beasts they'd been facing weren't magical, however they'd been bred — or at least, not magical enough to make her anything but a target and a distraction on the battlefield.

But she had been in a few and she'd remembered one in particular, if only because of her embarrassment at her clumsiness being caught on film and shown in theaters across Japan. So when she'd had the same realization that there had to be more to the enemy even faster than her “daughter”, she'd kept an eye cocked to the sky above them, what little she could see thanks to the lights above them. And so she'd been the first to see the winged snakes swooping down toward them out of the darkness.

“Incoming!” she called out as she yanked off her tiara. The tiara reshaped itself into an edged disc, and a split-second later she sent the Moon Frisbee spinning up to neatly bisect the lead snake. Even as the two halves fell writhing toward the ground, she narrowed her eyes and focused them on the rightmost of the next pair of flyers, ignoring its partner, and the Moon Frisbee curved in its flight to sweep around and intersected the flyer and slice off a wing as it flew back to its owner. Moon snatched the Moon Frisbee out of the air and spun to the side, long blond braid whipping around her, as the last flyer spat a glob of mucus past her head as it pulled out of its dive. A quick toss, and Moon ignored the scattered pieces falling from the sky to scan the square as she held up a hand and the disc slapped into her palm.

In the middle of the square, Saturn and Endymion had their eyes on the winged snakes circling above them. Mucus dripped from the curved double blade of the Silence Glaive and coated one of Saturn's shoulders, and she was absentmindedly stomping on the head of one tiny snake lying on the concrete at her feet. Endymion was circling, his blood-streaked sword held ready. Moon quickly again threw the Moon Frisbee, guiding its path to cut a bloody swath through the circling pack, and within seconds the only snakes left were dropping from the sky in pieces.

Moon looked over the bloody trash- and body-filled ground as she hurried to join the other two. All the giant constrictors were dead, the paralyzed people were mostly pulled to the side and some were beginning to move a little, and — “Where's Chibi-Moon?' she demanded, looking around frantically.

“She was pulling people out of danger, the last I saw,” Endymion responded. “That was just before —”

“DADDY!”

Endymion and the two Senshi whipped around at the shriek, and Endymion charged forward into the poorly lit alley. Moon and Saturn followed right behind him, arriving in time to have to dodge the sudden fountain of blood from the now headless giant boa coiled around their best friend and “daughter.”

Endymion didn't bother to dodge, ignoring the blood that splashed across him to frantically pull the snake's coils away from Chibi-Usa until she was lying alone on the concrete. Saturn dropped to her knees beside her best friend. “Is … is she …”

Endymion felt for a pulse. “She's alive,” he said, shoulders slumping in relief. “Moon, get her out of here — yes, I know that means you have to carry her like this, but we can't leave her here. Saturn and I need to check the rest of the booths for any more constrictors hiding in them.”

Moon opened her mouth to protest, only to pause as she remembered — they were being watched, and not by the camera crews that haunted Juuban this time. If she healed her daughter here …”Right,” she finally said with a voice leached of all emotion. Kneeling, she scooped up the younger girl as gently as she could, tears starting to roll down her cheeks as the unconscious Chibi-Moon whimpered, then turned to run as smoothly as she could across the square and away from the battlefield. The bathrooms we changed behind, they'll be empty by now with everyone fled, I don't remember any windows, that'll do, she thought fiercely as she ran.

Behind her, Saturn and Endymion grimly took turns looking through the booths while the other kept an eye on the skies.