Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Come What May ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Purr: Actually in the manga, it does show that Yuutarou develop what looks to be a crush on Kaoru. I think it's shown in the anime but not as obvious as in the manga. That's why I had Yuuki have a little crush on Usagi.

loupgarou7: Sorry, but since I'm using the manga version of RK, Sayo never showed up in Sano's past life so she won't be showing up now. And anyway, I like the chemistry between Sano and Megumi too much to have Sano get into a relationship with someone else. Yeeheehee! Yes I saw the first part of the second OAV and while I don't care much for how they drew Kaoru, the story does seem really interesting as they altered some events that happened in the anime/manga. Can't wait to see the second part.

Come What May--A Sailor Moon/Rurouni Kenshin Crossover Fanfiction

DISCLAIMER: Characters do not belong to me; they belong to Takeuchi Naoko-sama and Nobuhiro Watsuki-sama (Aren't those two just wonderful?).

*I'm setting this story in the Sailor Moon anime continuity (with a hint of the manga), one year after the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars Season. Usagi and the Inner Senshi are 17 year olds and Mamoru is 23 years old. For the Rurouni Kenshin part of the story, I'm using the anime until just after the "Kyoto Arc" and then I switch to the manga for the "Revenge Arc". As always, if you are unfamiliar with any of these two animes, be prepared for some spoilage, light or otherwise.*

Chapter 6

By: Hime

Updates at himes_fanfiction-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

~*~*~*~

"Some love lasts a lifetime. True love lasts forever."

-Unknown

~*~*~*~

When the Sailor Senshi first went through the Time Gates all those years ago, they never had the chance to explore the place around them, with good reason-They might have seen something they shouldn't have. So Sailor Pluto rushed them off to the future, through the gates to Crystal Tokyo. The Senshi never got the chance to see the beauty of the Time Gates. How the mist flying low through the air made it seem as if one was walking on the clouds. How in the center chamber, hundreds of thousands of mirrors were suspended in air by nothing short of magic, each capable of showing a different moment in time. It was in this chamber that Sailor Pluto stood in front of an ornate mirror with a frame of white crystal. The light that filtered through the air, came from an unknown light source, and caused rainbows to appear from the beautiful frame.

"Father Cronos, Lord of all time past and yet to come. Grant me the sight to see what I need to see. Show me the future of the 30th century. Show me Crystal Tokyo." Sailor Pluto lifted her staff and pointed the garnet ball toward the blank mirror. The orb flashed a brilliant shade of garnet and went dark once more. The mirror stayed blank, showing nothing. Sailor Pluto's eyes glittered with unshed tears as she failed for the fourth time to call upon the sight of the future. She was tempted to shatter the mirror into pieces with her staff, the black surface almost seeming to mock her efforts, but managed to control herself. She walked to another mirror, this time with it's frame made out of aged cherry wood.

Once more she called upon her powers to show her what she wanted to see and this time the mirror granted her wish. She watched as instead of a pink-haired girl falling out of the sky, landing on a kissing couple, she herself appeared from out of a reflection in the water to inform her future queen and king about a fight for the future. Suddenly, all the memories of herself doing so came to her, making Sailor Pluto grab her head in acute agony as her mind tried to process all the new knowledge.

Pluto turned to another mirror, leaning on her staff slightly. The mirror immediately came to life, showing how Setsuna had led Usagi to meet a lonely girl named Hotaru and watched as they befriended each other. Once more knowledge flooded through her mind. Pluto understood what was happening. If Chibi-Usa's existence had been erased from the timelines, then the past was beginning to change, removing the traces of the young girl. The only way to make sure the end of the world didn't happen was for Pluto to step in and make sure certain events occurred, taking the place of Chibi-Usa. And the reason that Chibi-Usa didn't exist was because the conditions that would have led to her birth had been changed. Every little thing someone does sends a ripple that causes another ripple and another. By meeting Ryu in this lifetime, Usagi changed the future without knowing. Even if Usagi and Mamoru were to have a child, it wouldn't be Chibi-Usa, at least not the one that they had all known, since the circumstances are different. Her name might be the same, but her soul wouldn't be. Pluto cursed her ability to know and remember all the different aspects of the future and the past for the millionth time in her long lifetime. Even if no one else could remember Chibi-Usa, Sailor Pluto would and she would mourn the young princess who came to mean so much to her.

Pluto wanted desperately to cry, to take time out from her duties and just let all her sadness, her helplessness out in a river of tears, but she knew she couldn't. She hadn't cried when she saw the Moon Kingdom fall, she wouldn't cry when the fates took her surrogate daughter from her. Now she moved toward a plain mirror, the only one that was showing any scenes of life. It was the mirror of the "present" and she watched as Makoto-chan answered a question asked by her teacher while Usagi tried to hide behind her textbook. With a hesitant hand, Pluto reached out to the mirror and lightly touched it's surface. The scene changed to show a handsome red-haired man at a desk, dressed in a white dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He was writing on a legal pad, his handwriting messy and almost unreadable. Pluto watched this scene for a while before making a gesture over the mirror as if erasing the scene before her and the mirror went dark. Even though the images were gone, she stared into its glassy surface with an intense stare, as if doing so, she would be able to see the answers to all the questions she had of the future. 'What now, O' Guardian of Time?' she asked herself mockingly. But there was nothing that she could do now except wait for the future to unfold. 'At least Usagi said she would stay with Mamoru,' she thought with a little optimism. 'As long as those two are together, the future is not lost.'

~*~*~*~

Luna was mad at her, Usagi thought to herself, a little depressed about her fight with her guardian cat. When Usagi entered her room last night, Luna had been there to pounce on the girl with questions about a certain "Kenshin". Unable to answer the cat's questions to her satisfaction, Usagi finally blew up and told her it was none of her business. Hurt, Luna announced that she was going to stay at Minako's house for the time being, leaving the room from Usagi's open window. The fact that Luna was going by herself to Minako's house showed how upset the cat was. To get to her house, Luna would have to cross a main street, one that was known for it's heavy traffic; a street that Luna avoided as much as she avoided the neighborhood dogs.

Usagi sighed as she walked out of her classroom. 'Well there's nothing I can do about now.' She hurried when she saw her friends waiting for her at the end of the hall. As she reached them, it was at that moment she realized something. "Um, guys? Is it okay if a friend comes with us to the study session?"

Ami smiled at Usagi, "Sure, the more the merrier. Who is she?"

"Actually, it's a guy."

Straight away, Minako and Makoto surrounded her, and began to ask, "Who is he? Is he cute? Does he attend this school?"

"Um, he's names Shinnosuke and he's already graduated from high school." At least, Usagi hoped he graduated from high school. She shook her head. "As for him being cute, why don't you go and see for yourselves. He's waiting for us outside the school gates."

The two rushed to the windows, intent on seeing this guy. "Shoot, can't see his face." Minako said with a pout.

"Why don't we just go down and meet him." Ami said. Minako immediately got a sly grin on her face and began to poke Ami in the side with her elbow. "Why Ami-chan, curious to see if he's cute too?" Ami blushed a bright red.

"Minako-chan, stop teasing her." Makoto admonished her friend. Ami gave the tall brunette a glad smile.

"You're right! We should hurry down and check too see if this guy's cute!" Minako said with a giggle before zooming off.

"Um, maybe you should catch her before she scares your friend off." Makoto gave Usagi a nudge, hurrying her along after Minako. Makoto grabbed on to Ami's elbow, dragging her along with her long strides. "I wouldn't want to miss this for anything."

~*~*~*~

"Babysitting!" Makoto, Minako, and Ami shouted out in surprise. As one, they turned to stare at the blushing blonde besides them.

"Who would trust you to watch their kids?" Minako blurted out. Both Makoto and Ami put their hand to their forehead in acute embarrassment. Shinnosuke looked amused, wearing the same smirk he had on when the girls had arrived to hear Minako ask him for his birth date, as she wanted to check if, astrologically, they would make a good couple. In fact, come to think of it, Makoto and Ami did the same things with their hands when they heard this. Usagi, on the other hand, just got mad.

"Excuse me?"

"Who would trust you to watch their kids?" Minako said slowly, with much enunciation. Confused, Usagi turned to Ami.

With a smile, the blue-haired girl said to her friend, "I think she thinks you asked her to repeat herself."

"You mean she wasn't?" At Minako's innocent question, Shinnosuke couldn't hold it in any longer; he had to laugh. And so he did, laughing so hard he had to stop walking and bent over in the effort to catch he's breath. Once he could breath properly he gave all four girls a big grin. "I can see studying with you guys will be some fun after all."

"Why are you studying with us, Shinnosuke-san? I mean, if you don't mind me asking you." Ami said politely.

"You can call me Shinnosuke or just Shin is fine." He said to Ami with a wink, smiling a little when a faint pink hue came to the younger girl's cheeks. He then shrugged and continued saying, "I'm going to need a lot of help to pass the college entrance exams and I heard you were a genius, so why not study with the best." Ami's blush intensified in color, turning her face red.

To cover her embarrassment, Ami turned to look at Usagi. "Usagi-chan do you think it's wise to take an afternoon job? Will you be able to keep up with your studies?"

"Oh come on Ami-chan. Usagi will do fine. And think of what she can buy us with her hard earned cash!" Minako said gleefully with an arm around the blue-haired girl's shoulders.

Shinnosuke didn't bother to hide his grin as he watched Usagi chase her friend around the tall brunette. He liked how this Minako-girl thought. If Usagi's other friend turned out to be just as unusual as Minako-chan, today's study session would be a blast.

~*~*~*~

"And then these girls used their psychic energy to repel the demons trying to take over Japan after World War II. The fought in these huge mecha's that were run by steam and these women were actress' during the day." There was complete silence after Shinnosuke stopped talking. "What? Did I miss something?" Shinnosuke asked, unnerved by the long pause.

"Ah, Shinnosuke-san," Ami began, "where did you get this information."

"Oh, some historical manga I picked up."

"Sakura Taisen?" Minako asked with disbelief.

"Yeah that's the one!" He said with a smile. There was a moment of silence before Usagi burst out laughing.

"Bwahahaha!" Usagi began to chortle.

"Usagi-chan!" Ami gasped out. How rude of her to laugh at Shinnosuke's…mental deficiencies.

"What'd I do?" Usagi turned hurt eyes to her friend. Rei had a hunch and looked at Usagi's textbook, which Usagi quickly brought up to her chest. With her mouth set in a frown, Rei wrestled the book away and found to her displeasure a tankoubun of the recent volume of "HunterXHunter" nestled within.

"Usagi…" Rei fairly growled the name out. With great interest Minako looked on. She hadn't seen Rei chew Usagi out in a while and, weirdly enough, she had been missing the scene a bit. She propped her head up with her hand and wished that Usagi and Shinnosuke hadn't eaten all the snacks earlier.

"Usagi no Baka! You're here to study, not goof off. I go easy on you for a couple of months and this is how you act? That's it, you are going to study all the time if I have to strap you into a chair and tape your eyes open!" The room was quiet as everyone wondered how Usagi would react to the tongue-lashing she had just received.

"Oh Rei-chan, I'm so glad you're yelling at me!" Usagi jumped off the ground and hugged her stunned friend. "I was so worried when you started to be so nice to me all of a sudden." Minako's head slipped off her hand and landed with a thump onto the table surface. Everyone else fell over on his or her side. Then the sound of Shinnosuke's laughter filled the room.

"Geez Rabbit-girl, you have got to be the weirdest person I've ever met."

"Then you have to be the stupidest, you-you Rooster-head!" Usagi fired back. 'Rooster-head?' That sounded vaguely familiar to her. Suddenly, Shinnosuke began to laugh again and then Usagi began to laugh with him. The other girls just watched the two with wide eyes, Rei especially.

"Well if you don't like Rabbit-girl, why don't I just call you Jou-chan, then?"

"Couldn't you just use my real name?"

"Where would the fun be in that?"

"Then I'm going to call you Shin-chan." At this, Rei's eyes narrowed and Shinnosuke raised his hands in protest.

"Shin-chan? Makes me sound like a wuss." He snorted at the thought.

"Ohhhh…" Minako began to shiver in her seat. "Can I call you Shin-chan too?"

"Huh?" Shinnosuke turned to look at her and was surprised to find she was sitting right next to him. He hadn't even noticed that she had left her place from the other side of the table. "No one's going to call me Shin-chan."

"Ah, come on Shin-chan, you know you look too cool for anyone to think that." Minako grabbed his arm and let her head drop on it and looked up through her lashes at him. Makoto had to shake her head in amazement at this display before her. Minako was laying it on really thick and Shinnosuke was lapping it up. Makoto wanted to look away but she couldn't manage to do it. It was like a horrible traffic accident had just occurred before her and while she didn't want to see the dead bodies; she couldn't quite look away from the scene either. Finally, Makoto turned to look at Usagi and found the blonde girl writing furiously into her notebook.

"Usagi-chan, what are you writing?"

"I'm taking notes." Usagi said, as she continued to write, lifting her head to watch Minako and Shinnosuke. "Minako's technique might come in handy one day."

~*~*~*~

"Who are you?" The question rang through the serene air of the temple grounds. Shinnosuke turned around to see Usagi's friend Rei looking at him with serious purple eyes. "Who are you to Usagi?"

"Just Shin-chan." He replied with a smirk. When her expression didn't change, Shinnosuke dropped his smirk and gave a sigh before saying, "I'm a friend of a friend of hers. Nothing but a friend."

"Which friend of Usagi's are you friends with?"

"Why should it matter to you?"

"Because…" Rei's voice trailed off.

"Because of what?"

"You don't need to know why I'm asking." Rei fired back, anger making her eyes glow with an inner fire.

"Then you don't need to know my answer." Shinnosuke turned to go when Rei grabbed his right hand. A weird shock ran up her arm and a quick scene came up before her eyes of someone who looked like Shinnosuke and a beautiful black-haired women before Rei pulled her hand back as quickly as she could.

"What?" She looked at her hand and then at his. Grabbing his wrist, she turned his palm up to face the sun and her inspection. An ugly red line marred his palm.

Uncomfortable under her intense stare, Shinnosuke shrugged and said, "It's just a birthmark I've had since I was young. It's not anything special."

Rei didn't seem to even notice that he spoke up and murmured under her breath, "It's a psychic scar." Shinnosuke shot her a frown and pulled his hand back.

"Ah, excuse me." She let his hand go and in a distracted voice said, "I hope you come to Monday's study session." She turned away from him, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. Shinnosuke was instantly reminded of Yanagi. It was the same elegant motion, the same flick of the wrist. He watched Rei enter through the sliding doors of her room, where the rest of the girl's continued to study. Shaking his head, Shinnosuke began walking toward the stairs. 'I need a drink. Studying is way to hard.'

~*~*~*~

With one hand on the frame of her door, Rei looked out toward the stairs, eyes unfocused as she thought about Shinnosuke and the mark on his hand. 'What happened to him, that he should carry a mark from a past life?' she wondered to herself. Her worries about Usagi and this "friend" of hers was forgotten as Rei puzzled over something new. 'And that scene I saw. Was that image of how he got it?'

"Rei-chan, you alright?"

Startled, Rei whirled to meet Makoto's concerned green eyes. "What's wrong?"

Rei turned to shut her door. "Nothing's wrong." She managed to say in a calm tone. When she knew her eyes showed nothing of her troubled thoughts, she turned to face her friend. "Nothing at all."

~*~*~*~

Glossary:

Tankoubun: complied issues of 1 series, like how in the Sailor Moon tankoubun they have fours "acts" in the first volume.

Side Notes:

Sakura Taisen: This is a manga and OAV series, which in America is called Sakura Wars. I liked this series and if you ever seen it, doesn't Sakura kind of remind you of Kaoru?

…tankoubun of the recent volume of "HunterXHunter": This is a really great and intriguing manga series by Takeuchi Naoko's husband, Yoshihiro Togashi. He's widely known for his popular series, YuYu Hakusho that Cartoon Network is planning on showing. HunterXHunter is so different from YuYu Hakusho, especially the artwork. The story is also more light hearted then YuYu Hakusho though we do have our psycho killers and scary short people who can kill without regret. A lot of decapitation and cuts up body parts are found within this series too. I love Gon and Killua; their interactions with each other are so funny.

It's a psychic scar: The scar and the scene that Rei sees come from the episode in RK when Megumi was about to commit suicide for making poisoned opium and Sano stops her by grabbing her blade in his hand, cutting himself in the process. In this lifetime, Shin-chan carries a birthmark or a "psychic scar" of the event that happened in his past life.

Author's Notes:

Like I've said before, I was planning on writing more for this chapter but I felt that I should release it as soon as I could. Wow, it's been along time, ne? Gomen ne minna-san. I've been super busy and my computer broke down on me earlier so that's another reason I couldn't write. My schedule is a bit hectic this semester but I want you guys to know that I will continue to write this series but please be prepared for times when I don't post anything for a while. As for those who miss Ryu-chan, don't worry he has a huge part in the next chapter of this story though I'm not sure when that'll be posted. Ah well, keep your eyes out.

Hime

2/25/02

revised 4/17/02