Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A New Future 2 - First Blood ❯ Opening Moves ( Chapter 33 )

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.

Vanguard glanced up at the doorway as Moon and Endymion walked into the common room where the redhead had held the previous afternoon's briefing. Good, that was almost the last, and they looked ... and moved ... like they'd actually spent most of the night sleeping. For that matter, they moved as if they didn't have a care in the world. It had to be an act, of course, though the reawakened princess couldn't say for certain — she'd quickly dropped out of her center as each addition to their little group had ramped up the tension. She imagined Akane had, as well.

For a moment, she looked over at her lover and two youngest Senshi, the new Three Musketeers. Akane was an even better fit now, with the surprise Usa and Hotaru had given her during the previous evening's get-together, after she and Ranma had had a final spar — her own costume. So now she was dressed in the same uniform as Vanguard, with the colors mixed a bit: red leotard; white skirt and sleeveless jacket; and blue boots, gloves, headband, bicycle pants, and bow on her butt. Akane had been incredibly happy with Ranma's assessment of her progress (and Vanguard was just happy that she'd been centered at that point, so that her lover couldn't pick up just how reluctant she'd been to make that assessment), in tears over the costume when Hotaru and Usa pulled it out, but less than pleased with Ranma's contribution — a silhouette of a hammer, centered right on her chest. Her new nom de guerre of Hammer hadn't gone over very well, either, but when Ranma pointed out that she needed a name ... along with a little reminder of her biggest weakness ... she grudgingly agreed to go along with her sensei.

Finally the princess forced her gaze away from her lover. Come on, Ranma, ya got a job ta do. She still didn't know how she'd ended up semi-officially in charge — the Amazons had deferred to her, of course, but Moon and Pluto had quietly stepped back as well. When she'd found out that she was going to be giving the final briefing ... She glanced around the room, gauging the readiness of the others helping themselves to the light Western-style breakfast that her mother ... and Nabiki, of all people ... had brought in (Nabiki doing her best not to roll on the floor laughing when she saw Akane's costume). For most, that simply meant gauging how rested they were, though in the case of Soun it included looking over the armor he was wearing, making sure it was properly fitted and buckled on.

Finally, the redhead nodded. As promised, her mother had made sure that those that hadn't paired off to their own rooms in the early evening made it to their own beds at a reasonable hour, and it seemed those that had taken themselves to bed earlier had taken her suggestion to heart. In fact, everyone had arrived but ... “Hey, Puu, where's Venus?” she asked in a low voice, stepping up beside the oldest of the Senshi where she stood looking out the window at the pre-dawn park (oldest of everybody, for that matter, not that even the much-younger redhead was stupid enough to mention that).

Pluto glanced down at her young friend, an impish grin lighting up her face. “She'll be here in a few minutes,” she replied, equally softly. “She decided last night to visit the neighbors.”

“Neighbors — the Amazons?” Vanguard hissed.

“Yes.”

“She's going to be exhausted, what was she thinking?” the redhead moaned, fighting to keep her voice down.

Pluto shrugged. “She wasn't thinking, really. Eventually she's going to need to get over that, get back to what she used to be, but not yet. She'll be all right, if necessary the Elders would have made sure things ended at a reasonable hour.”

The impish smile turning gentle, she added, “Ranma ... Yasuko ... relax. I know Moon and I caught you by surprise when we dumped things on you, but this is the best kind of battle to be in charge of, for your first time — an Alexander kind of battle, all the plans laid out, no way for you to manage things once the fighting starts even if your own job didn't make that impossible. So now all there is for you to do is to look confident for your people, give the word when it's time to attack, and then fight like a demon. More than that, what happens, happens.”

Vanguard took a deep breath, and felt a stiffness she'd hardly been aware of vanish away as she exhaled. “Right, I can do that. Thanks, Puu.”

“You're welcome.” The two turned to the window to watch as dark shapes emerged from the slowly lightening night, Pluto's arm circling her oldest friend's daughter to give her a brief hug that had Ranma rolling her eyes — though she didn't shrug it off. In a few minutes Vanguard would gather everyone around for a quick planning session for their opening attack, but for now the two simply stood, luxuriating in each other's presence,

/oOo\

“So, Centurion, is the cohort ready?” Marcus Manilius Otho asked as he rejoined his junior officers in what little open space was left in the center of the vanguard, alongside the pillars that marked where the gateway would form. Behind him, the gap in the last circle of soldiers closed.

“Yes, Tribune,” Decimus Sulpicius Pennus replied to the traditional rhetorical question. “Anything new in the last briefing?”

Manilius shook his head. “No, nothing. The worst we should expect in the initial action are the two handfuls of local magical girls, and one knight, described to us before. By the time the authorities can react with what army they have, the beachhead will be solidly established.” Looking around at the other centurions, he asked, “So, any questions come up since our last briefing?” When the three centurions shook their heads, he nodded, unsurprised. This wasn't their first time — or third — as part of the first legion of a new conquest, even if it was their first time as the vanguard. “Very well, take your places with your centuries.” The centurions saluted, fists to armored chests, and hurried away through the crush.

As Manilius watched them go, he considered the last searching glance Sulpicius had given before seeking his post. The older man had been with him for over half his career, following him up the ranks, so he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that the First Spear had noticed his lack of enthusiasm for the newest campaign. Manilius sighed softly as he looked up at the tall crystalline pillar at the edge of the mass of men that made up his cohort, then turned slowly in place, sweeping his gaze across the other nine pillars, the anchors that represented the continuing expansion of the Confederacy. He was as pious as he had ever been, giving all honor to God and his ancestors. His drive to be of service, to earn the luxury and privileges that he had been born into, had never faltered. But since the suppression of the revolt on Greater Hawaii, his fire to spread the peace and justice of civilization to warring, divided worlds had sunk to guttering embers.

No, it hasn't sunk to guttering embers, it's been buried under a massive pile of bodies of the innocent, along with Titus Iulius's crimes. Our `glorious history' doesn't look so glorious, after that `worthy' senator's orders, does it? But whether Manilius's newfound doubts were well-founded, baseless, or the truth was somewhere in the middle; whether he continued in his military career, shifted to the political arena earlier than he had planned to fight the corruption he had discovered at the heart of the Confederacy, or withdrew to become a hermit on his father's estates; whatever the future was to bring, he could not fail the men that he commanded, and with the first hint of the sun over the horizon, it was time.

/\

Over eight hours to the west, in the dark of the early night, the massive Plaza of Triumph at the heart of Rome, the largest and greatest city in the history of the world, was abruptly illuminated brighter than noonday as the portal to the Confederacy's newest frontier flashed into existence, coruscating with every color of the rainbow for long seconds before settling to a soft, steady, glowing pearly gray.

As the light show faded, a cheer loud enough to shake the ground went up from the mass of spectators packing the plaza except for the wide cobblestoned boulevard leading to the portal and filling the buildings and perched in the trees that circled around the grassy sward, a tiny fraction of the City's tens of millions.

The jubilant cheering cut off as the soldiers filling the boulevard raised their pilum, and the soldiers shouted out their own “Hurrah!” As the echoes of their guttural bellow died, the legion's commanding legate stretched out his arm with his hand spread open, snapped it closed into a fist, and without another order the front ranks began their march toward the portal, shifting into a two-man column as they went. Another cheer from the spectators roared out to shake the trees as the first two soldiers disappeared into the portal's gray nothingness.

/oOo\

Vanguard fought to keep her sudden tension from throwing her off her newly-acquired center as the massive flash of light through the window at her back threw her shadow on the inner wall. The light died as quickly as it came, and she whirled in place to stare out through the open window at the early dawn-lit park, and the mass of men now standing shoulder to shoulder in concentric rings within the circle of ten tall, glowing crystalline pillars, exactly where Pluto had said they'd be.

Even as young princess turned to see them, the men started spreading out, outer ring slowly marching forward and breaking up, gaps filling in with men from the ring behind them, and behind that....

“As choreographed as kabuki theater,” the Senshi of the Deeps murmured from the next window.

“Those are Romans!” Mercury exclaimed from beyond Neptune. “Pluto, why didn't you tell us?”

“No, they aren't Romans,” Pluto disagreed with a shrug from where she still stood beside the shorter redhead. “I was never able to find the timeline they originate from, but as best I could determine they came about because a medieval Italian city-state decided to return to the old ways and managed to make it work. But it doesn't really matter, they could be from the Mongol hordes and it wouldn't change what's happening now.”

Vanguard ignored the discussion, gaze fixed on the spreading circle of soldiers. “Almost there, focus,” she called out, and the discussion cut off as the men below stopped advancing, the last gaps in the large circle filling in. She shifted her gaze to the center of the park where the circular portal shone, a mass of men standing by it (the reserve, she thought, remembering the mini-lessons in tactics she'd gotten as she, Pluto, Ku Lon and Colonel Okuda, the officer in charge of the JSDF soldiers, had worked out their plans). To the side was another, smaller group — the command staff.

Returning her attention to the outer circle in front of her, Vanguard waited, ignoring the growing mix of fear, anger, sorrow, hatred, eagerness and regret from around her. The soldiers below were beginning to shift in place a bit, some of them apparently murmuring to each other, relaxing even as they kept their eyes fixed on the building in front of the. ... A split-second's concentration, and her view went slightly hazy as the translucent eye screen she'd developed after her last less than successful battle materialized. She nodded to her oldest friend, and as Pluto stepped away into empty air, she sprang up to the window sill. “Go!”

/\

Manilius stood in place, hands clasped behind his back, frowning slightly as he skipped from squad circuit to squad circuit, listening to the soft murmur of his soldiers commenting on this newest world as the view from vidcam after vidcam on his soldiers' helmets flashed up on the screen projected down from the front brim of his crested helmet. He understood why the cohort assigned to establishing the beachhead was always the best in the legion, they would be alone until the first of the legion could arrive through the portal and needed to be able to hold their perimeter to give those reinforcements room. But their solid professionalism meant they all knew that the sheer speed of the first strike would —

He stiffened as the flashing montage froze. One of those frontline soldiers had tapped his override, forcing his vidcam feed onto the screens of Manilius and his staff and locking out the rest, and Manilius gaped for a moment at the people dropping from the second story windows of the building the unmoving soldier was facing — he recognized some of them from his briefings, but there were over twice as many as he'd expected and either some were men beyond the one he was told of, or they were the ugliest magical girls he'd ever seen.

Shaking himself out of his shock, he mentally tripped the key acknowledging the soldier's feed, the one signaling the soldier that he was free to move, and a third sending a general alert out to every soldier in the cohort. Forget the numbers, Marcus, what's important is that they're here, right now! For the first time, they knew we were coming, and that means it's a whole new game.

/\

Saturn fought to keep her face calm as she hit the ground outside the apartment building and charged forward, arms and legs pumping as she raced toward the enemy line already firming up into a tower shield wall, her foster parents on one side and her oldest and newest friends on the other. While she had trained for this day, she had hoped it would never come. Of course, if it hadn't been for Yasuko waking up, this would have been her last day, instead. Not this time!

Ahead of them, a shout went up from the line of tower shields they were rapidly approaching, and with it a shower of javelins arcing toward the charging Senshi and Nerimans. Still beside Saturn, Neptune dramatically waved an arm in an arc across their front and a wall of water sprang up. It was instantly punctured by javelin points, a few punching all the way through to simply drop straight down and stick into the ground, all momentum gone, others suspended in the wall and slowly sliding down through the water.

“Keep going!” Neptune shouted when the Nerimans began to slow down, and just before they hit the wall it collapsed ahead of them, again revealing the startled soldiers, now soaked and staggering back into the second rank — and third — under the pounding wave. Before they could recover the racing defenders were upon them and they braced themselves, only to gape as nineteen people leaped, soaring over the lines (accompanied by a shouted “Wheeee!” from the tiny form of Hinako in Soun's arms).

Saturn glanced back as she ran to find another wall of water behind them with more javelins again stuck in it and sliding down toward the ground, then faced forward again, grinning for a moment as she focused on the square of soldiers ahead of them, already beginning to spread out into a line. Her Neptune-mama was getting good — but then, she didn't have to wait until Pluto-mama could find time to take her to the dark side of the Moon for a private and safe place to practice attacks that needed to be dialed town from devastating entire buildings, potentially entire blocks. A weekend trip to a secluded beach (not to say privately owned, and just how much wealth and property did Setsuna-mama own?) worked just fine.

“Now!” Vanguard shouted.

The Senshi and martial artists slammed to a stop ten yards short, Soun swinging down his armful and whispering hastily in her ear. The childlike former teacher fished in her bag of coins as others raised arms, pointed staves, swords, the soldiers lifted their shields ... and a massive tide of water, fire, ice, lightning, slashes of energy and seemingly the very air slammed into them, smashing them back, down, aside, pieces of shield, armor, shrieking men spinning up and away.

Then they were charging forward again, splitting away into their separate groups. Saturn focused on the softly shining almost flat vertical circle in front of her, trying to ignore the shattered remnants of what had been scores of human beings moments earlier, the splashes of red across the grass, the stench of burnt flesh and spilled guts....

Ukyo and Konatsu, Xian Pu and Mu Tse put on a burst of speed to race ahead, each pair whipping around a different side of the portal to take out the almost ceremonial guards stationed there. By the time the other four caught up the two guards were already down, one dead without a head, the second unconscious and dying as he rapidly bled out from the stumps where an arm and a leg had been.

A distinctly greenish-faced Hammer tore her energy visor-covered eyes away from the sight, focusing on the face of her lover. (Too late, Saturn thought distantly, she's going to be seeing that again in her dreams.) “Ran — Vanguard, please ... be careful,” the raven-haired girl said, voice soft. Vanguard simply nodded, smiling reassuringly as her sword sprang to life in her right hand and her kite shield across her left arm, then turned and stepped into the empty grayness of the portal and vanished from sight. The remaining seven quickly fell into a half-circle across the portal, Xian Pu and Mu Tse on the left flank, Ukyo and Konatsu on the right, Chibi-Moon, Hammer and Saturn in the center.

Saturn took a deep breath and stepped forward as she concentrated and the Silence Glaive materialized in her hands. My turn to commit murder, she thought as she lifted her polearm vertically before her. For a moment she hesitated, shivers beginning to run through her as she looked across the lines of men between her and the apartment building Ranma had pointed out in the final briefing, rear ranks already turned to face her. Then the image of the park from a week before rose up, the tiny bodies scattered across the sidewalks and lawn, little Satoru crying for his dead mother and father, the battle before with the flying things leaving people paralyzed as the snakes crushed the life from them, and her face went cold. She remembered a phrase she'd heard Mars use once, that the fiery Senshi had picked up from her private Catholic school: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Well, reap this, she thought, and the blade of the Silence Glaive began to glow. The glow brightened until a purple-tinged ball of light coruscated all around it, and then the blade dropped.

/\

Vanguard glanced around the tunnel she found herself in. It was a curving, circular tube the same softly glowing gray as the flattish circle she had stepped through, a bit over man-height, its texture just barely rough enough to keep her feet from slipping — just about the worst possible terrain for her family school of martial arts, and she once again asked the kamis' blessings on Inouoe-san for giving her the idea of forming sword and shield out of her ki instead of claws.

C'mon, Ranma, the further in ya meet `em, the better. The redhead started jogging down the tunnel, picking up speed to a full out run as she decided the footing was secure enough.

Less than a minute later Vanguard heard clanking noises coming from ahead of her, shuffling sounds, an indecipherable mix of human voices growing louder. She slowed back down to a jog. Suddenly, around the curve ahead of her two soldiers appeared, more behind them, wearing the same metal armor shaped like a man's muscled torso, carrying the same shields as the soldiers she'd seen back in the park.

The eyes of the soldiers in the lead widened as she came into view, the one on the right yelling something in a language she'd never heard before even as they continued marching toward her. He looked her up and down as he approached, then leered at her as he called out something else. The other soldiers laughed, a hungry undertone to the sound that sent a shiver up the Moon princess's spine, and suddenly an image flashed into her mind, the face of a dwarf of a man months dead, leering, laughing, taunting, groping....

Her hold on her center shivered, her shield and sword flickering in response, and Vanguard stopped, then backed up as she fought for control. Hold it together, Ranma — he's dead, he'll never hurt ya again, and these bastards sure as hell won't! Slowly, the flickering faded away as her control again firmed up. Still carefully falling back, she took a deep breath. Now!

She abruptly thrust her lifesword forward, and the blade elongated to twice its normal almost three feet, the tip plunging into and through her taunter's mouth to sever his spinal cord.

Even as his body started to fall forward, her sword fluctuated, transformed into a shield and she darted forward, sword in the hand where her shield had been, dropping and pivoting to take his partner across the knees just above his greaves, then leaping back to avoid the collapsing bodies.

The coarse laughter cut off and the soldier behind her second victim shouted in shock as arterial blood from the soon-to-be-corpse's leg stumps splashed across his legs. Vanguard gave the two men now in the front rank a predator's fierce grin even as her sword and shield again switched sides, and she ignored her rising nausea to flow forward again.