Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A New Future 2 - First Blood ❯ Final Probe ( Chapter 29 )

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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Hotaru had wondered from time to time why Setsuna-mama was so chintzy when it came to giving out details about when and where attacks would take place. As she glanced up at the clock on her bedroom wall from where she lay on her bed, she decided she had at least part of the answer. One hour to go.

Sighing, she refocused on the book she had propped up on her stomach (and reflected yet again that sooner or later, her bust had to develop to the point that she couldn't read like this — how was she supposed to attract boys if they kept mistaking her for their little sister?).

A few minutes later, her eyes again strayed to the wall. Fifty-six minutes to go.

Forty-eight minutes.

Forty-three minutes.

The raven-haired girl used one of Haruka-papa's favorite words as she realized she'd just covered the same page yet again, and had no more idea what she'd read than the first time.

“Ouch, don't let your Michiru-mama hear you say that. Where did you learn that one, anyway?”

Hotaru looked up to find the blonde bishonen figure of her Haruka-papa leaning against the door frame to her room, smirking at her adopted daughter. The sixteen-year-old smirked back before assuming a bland, questioning expression. “I got it from you, Haruka-papa, didn't you intend to let me hear you, the last time you were working on your bike?” she asked innocently, then grinned when Haruka winced.

“Double-ouch,” the young woman said, straightening and stepping into the room. (Not that a stranger would have guessed her sex without a second look, considering that she was following her usual penchant for men's wear.) “So, just why are you using language just a few years too old for you?” she asked.

Hotaru held up her book. “I'm just having a little trouble concentrating, that's all. The waiting is getting to me a little, I think it may be worse than the actual fighting,” she admitted.

“It's getting to me, too,” Haruka agreed, as she read the title on the book's spine: Fundamentals of Human Physiology. “Maybe you'll find it easier to concentrate if you read something a little lighter — that looks like a college textbook.”

“It is,” Hotaru said with a shrug. “I thought I'd see if learning how the body works will help my healing gift.”

“Like Ranma?” Haruka asked as she sat on the bed.

Hotaru sat up and put the book aside. “Well ... yes,” she admitted somewhat shamefacedly. “Ranma's spending hours every day with Ami studying the lifedancers, and ... and I haven't done anything like that. Maybe I could have saved —”

“No, you couldn't have,” Haruka interrupted. “Your gift doesn't work the same way as Ranma's — you've actually healed people without even trying, pure instinct. Ranma ... she hasn't healed anyone yet except for herself, in spite of all the study and the hours she's spent at the emergency room. She doesn't dare, yet, and I don't blame her. Those are real people she'd be using as guinea pigs if she did.” Tapping the book lying on the bed between them, she said, “Study this if you enjoy the subject, but don't try to forcefeed yourself knowledge you don't need — or you could end up like the centipede that tried to think through how it walked.”

Haruka looked blank for a moment, before nodding her understanding as she dredged up the memory of the story from one of the children's books her adopted parents had read to her several growth spurts ago. “I wish Usa could join us,” she muttered.

“You know why she can't,” Haruka said, stating the obvious, and lay down on the bed. “Where is the Spore, anyway? I'd think she'd still be here at least, even if she can't join the fight.”

Hotaru chuckled at the nickname Usagi had given her best friend as she lay down next to her father figure. “She decided to join her mom for the latest run to Nerima — something about avoiding temptation,” she replied. “Really, though, I think it's just an excuse to spend more time with Usagi — she's been doing that a lot, since the last probe.”

“Understandable, seeing how she almost died,” Haruka mused. “So, once this is over, just how do Ranma and the Three Musketeers intend to spend the summer break?”

/oOo\

As Saturn twisted to the side, two long, thin spikes flashing past her side, she grimly reflected that she was an idiot — the wait wasn't worse than the actual fighting, not even close. The youngest Senshi glanced around the battlefield that had been a popular park for the neighborhood's young mothers less than half an hour earlier, before a hole into otherwhere opened up and the guard dog-sized scorpionoids with multiple thin spikes on their stegosaurus-like tails in place of a stinger had flooded through for the long seconds before it closed.

Ami's computer had detected the incursion immediately, of course, and three of the four Outer Senshi had arrived within less than ten minutes. By that time the park had emptied out, and for some reason the huge scorpionoids had stayed in the park; casualties would be much lower than they could have been. But even as the Senshi of Silence tried to tell herself that this was a good thing, the normally gentle girl could feel bitter, angry hatred roiling in her gut as her eyes passed across the bodies lying scattered about on the grass and cement walkways — hatred, and guilt. However much she had appreciated the story she'd been told weeks earlier of Churchill and Coventry, every time her eyes fell on a still body that was much too small her soul shrieked that they should have been faster.

At least the clean-up is almost over, she thought as she almost casually swung up the Silence Glaive to intercept a springing scorpionoid, its tail empty of spikes. The blow slipped between the scorpionoid's reaching pincer-claws to split its body in half lengthwise in mid-air, and Saturn stepped to the side to avoid the plummeting pieces and ... mostly ... the shower of ichor. Even as she grimaced in distaste at the spatters she felt across her face (and took a split-second to be grateful for the training Ranma had almost forced on her in the use of her appointed weapon), she heard the distinctive sound of her foster-”father's” World Shaking attack from the other end of the park, and smiled grimly — the things they'd been fighting must have bunched up again, it seemed that their impromptu plan of Uranus and Neptune drawing the attention of the bulk of the things down on themselves where their attacks could deal with them en masse while Saturn took the perimeter to pick off the stragglers had worked —

Then the raven-haired teenager's head whipped around, her heart freezing at the first sounds of a child's whimpers coming from nearby, her eyes fixing on an upright stroller beside the body of a young woman Saturn assumed was the child's mother. Even as she sprinted toward the stroller and the child's whimpers turned to full-powered cries, she prayed that she had killed the last of the stragglers, that any that might be left had exhausted their limited supply of tail spikes ... but there, beyond the stroller and body, she saw another of the things turning toward the now rocking stroller, attracted by the child's struggles, arched tail rising to fire the few spikes left on its tip.

Saturn dove over the stroller and tucked into a roll, coming to her feet between the scorpionoid and its target, bringing up her Silence Wall — too late, two of the spikes hit, one passing straight through an upper thigh and the other slamming into her abdomen, piercing the armor of her fuku at the front and pushing the fabric slightly outward in back. Fighting down a shriek as the pain hammered her, she dropped the Wall and threw the Silence Glaive like a spear, pinning the thing to the ground. Even as the glaive struck, she grabbed the handbreadth of spike sticking out of her stomach and yanked it out, grateful that it hadn't hit any bone and gotten stuck — she really wouldn't have enjoyed having to wait until one of her foster parents found her and pulled it out for her.

She gasped in relief as she felt the pain already receding, dropping the spike and turning toward the screaming child only to freeze at the sight of the red stains spreading across the stroller's back. Then she was charging over and whipping around the stroller, eyes going wide at the blood pulsing from two holes low in the little boy's shirt. Fighting to keep her hands from shaking, the youngest Senshi unbuckled the boy as quickly as she could and pulled him out of the stroller. Pulling his T-shirt off over his head, she bunched it underneath his back and pressed her hands down over the pulsing blood. Fighting to ignore his weakening cries, struggling for calm, she sought to open herself up to her gift — and then she felt as if she was sinking into the body beneath her, sensing the weakening spark that she somehow knew was the dying child's life, and poured her own will to live into that guttering point of light. Under the onslaught of pure will to live, the guttering stopped, the spark brightened slightly — and there it stopped, holding steady but growing no stronger.

She never knew how long she crouched over the boy, fighting for his life before she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and heard the voice of her foster-mother. “Saturn? The paramedics are here — how long until you finish healing him?” Neptune asked softly.

“I can't!” Saturn managed to cry out. “It's taking everything I have to keep him alive, if I ease off he'll die before I can do anything!”

The hand left her shoulder. Through the dim haze her concentration had reduced the world around her down to, she seemed to hear the murmur of conversation, Mercury's name, Yasuko ... then a hand was on her shoulder again — this time her foster-”father.” “Saturn, the paramedics are going to take you to the hospital Yasuko is at right now, if anyone can help you it's her. But they have to shift the two of you onto a stretcher and get you into an ambulance. Can you hold on while they do that?”

Saturn nodded jerkily, beads of the sweat beginning to roll down her face shaking loose to spatter the back of her hands and across the boy's bare chest. “Spikes went straight through ... shirt under his back stopping bleeding,” she gasped out.

“Right, good girl,” Uranus acknowledged, and after more faintly heard conversation Saturn felt hands cover hers, gently pinning them in place. Other hands gripped her legs, lifting and shifting her around to straddle the child, then lifting her again, the boy rising with her, coming down on the canvas-covered poles of the stretcher, rising again and moving, the light dimming from moving into the back of the ambulance, settling, and then rocking slightly as the vehicle eased into motion.

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I wasn't able to find much on Hotaru's healing ability once she becomes Sailor Saturn, so what the heck, this is already AU. By decree, I'm ruling that her healing talent is separate from her Senshi powers and based on ki, and while more powerful now that she isn't weakened by the possession is still street-level cinematic.