Gomen nasai! Gomen nasai! Gomen nasai!
After I sent my last message I realized I'D FORGOTTEN
TO ATTACH THE FIC!
Atashi no BAKA!
Anyway, here it is. I'm sorry for the inconvenience
(and if anybody DOES choose to send me the idiot C&C,
I *promise* prompt reply!)
Raye
=====
raye_j@yahoo.com
Member of the Shoujo Anime Proliferation Project Ynstitute
(SAPPY)
If your mind is pure,
perhaps your brain has been washed.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place.
Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: twist.txt
-- Desc: twist.txt
Twist In Fate
by Raye Johnsen
raye_j@yahoo.com
*****************
"Gundam Wing" is copyright Sunrise and Bandai. All rights
are theirs, not mine, and I make no claim to any of them. I
also mention other animes in this fic, but because I want to
preserve some measure of anticipation in my alleged readers,
I will cite them at the end of the fic.
*****************
Lucrezia Noin swigged a mouthful of cool water from her
flask. She wiped a stray droplet from the corner of her mouth
with the back of her hand, continuing the motion with her
fingers across her forehead.
She looked down the steep path she had just climbed,
swallowed, and then looked back up ahead. She might be a
trained mobile suit pilot, but she was still vulnerable to vertigo.
/This is silly,/ she thought. /I have no proof./
But the fact remained that in less than a week, almost
all the women she dealt with regularly had vanished. And not
the usual 'I'm an antsy teenager and I'm going to go off and do
what *I* want' disappearance. They had truly *vanished*.
Lady Relena had been on L3 colony for a diplomatic
conference. She had climbed out of her limousine, walked into
the building - and never arrived at the conference room. A
older, holding her papers, was laid neatly on the floor of the
hall she had been walking down.
Hilde Schriebecker, a young ex-Oz officer who had
been working as a mechanic at a scrap yard on L2, had been
walking down the street. Duo Maxwell, her partner and
housemate, claimed he had been doing grocery shopping with
her, but then had seen an old friend and walked off to see him;
he had seen Hilde set off for home with the groceries.
/Or, in other words, he ran off so he wouldn't have to
carry his share,/ Lucrezia thought cynically. /Typical male./ The
thought no longer held any heat.
The fact remained that Hilde never arrived home. Duo
found the still-full grocery bag propped up against a tree
outside the door, but didn't find a trace of her. Anywhere.
Catherine Bloom, however, hadn't been going
anywhere. She had vanished out of the compound the circus
she was working at had set up, without motive or reason. Her
adopted brother, Trowa Barton, was near frantic.
Lucrezia's friend Sally Po had been determined that,
somehow, the answers would be found here, on this mountain.
But then Sally, too, had disappeared, without explanation or
trace...
She shook her head sharply. No! She wouldn't dwell on
it. She'd climb this wretched mountain, get to the top, see that
there really *was* nothing here, and then go back and continue
directing the search. There couldn't be anything here...
Climbing up onto the ledge, she stared, shocked, and
dropped her flask.
The young woman, typing furiously into her laptop as
intensely as Yuy ever did into his, glanced up at her. "Oh.
Lucrezia Noin. Hello."
Lucrezia blinked. It was surreal, to say the least, and
somehow appropriate. "Oh. Hello."
The young woman tapped one last command in, and
then swivelled to face Lucrezia. "I refuse to say hello again,"
she commented, after a few moments of silence.
"I'm here to find out what happened to those four missing
women," Lucrezia declared, suddenly finding her determination.
The other gave a small, secretive smile. "I did my fellow
yaoi writers a favour."
Lucrezia stared. "I don't understand."
"I've put them - elsewhere."
"*You* *put* them *where*?"
The young woman smiled. It was not a nice smile. "Turn
around." Lucrezia stared at the insane woman sitting before her.
"You want to know? Turn around. I promise I won't kill you."
"Will you 'put' me somewhere, too?"
The woman laughed. "Don't be silly!" Lucrezia relaxed.
"Of course I will, but not yet. Now turn around."
Lucrezia turned reluctantly, to see a rippling haze in the
air before her.
"Lady Relena, first."
The haze swirled, colours bleeding in as milk swirls into
coffee, and shimmered into an image.
Relena stood on a training field, holding a racquet with
cloth-covered weights strapped to her wrists and ankles. Clad
in one of the briefest training outfits Lucrezia had ever seen,
Relena looked exhausted.
"And again!" a voice called, and Relena was lifting the
racquet, trying to swing at the rubber balls that began to
pummel at her.
"Come *on*, Kanzaki! You can do better than *that*!"
"I can do this, I can do this..." Relena muttered as she
swung.
"Kanzaki Relena! How can you possibly hope to equal
your mother and rise to the title of Cosmic Beauty when you
put on such a poor performance? Again!"
The haze swirled back to clear again.
"Hilde Schriebecker."
The haze spun into colour again, the scene forming
into a picture of a banner-hung hall. A great crowd of people
stood, gathered before a curtained dais. A man, repulsive in
his obesity, stood to one side on the dais, while Hilde stood,
wearing a strange, beautiful tunic, in the centre, touching the
hand of a handsome man. She stepped back.
"Is that all the candidates?" the fat man asked. "Well
then, if there's no-one else..."
Lucrezia saw a figure, all golden-yellow clothes and
flying braid, come dashing in the doorway as the air swirled
clear once more.
"Catherine Bloom."
The disc of startling air started to glow and twist
again, solidifying into the image of a tall, elegant building.
A girl walked across the grass of the lawn in front of
the building. Lucrezia was a little surprised to recognise
Catherine. She looked very sweet in the yellow-and-maroon
outfit.
Catherine, however, did not go into the school building,
but went around it to a small secluded building set to one
side. Lucrezia was rather surprised to see it was a church,
and a young nun was kneeling at the altar. She and Catherine
were speaking in whispers.
"... so I do believe that we can help," the young nun
finished.
"Yes, it's a job for St. Tail, for sure!" Catherine agreed.
The colours glowed once more and died into the swirl
of water going down the plughole that the image became.
"And, finally, Sally Po."
The disc brightened once more, into a blaze of red. It
slipped past, revealing a figure dressed in green. She was
carrying a bow and arrow that she had just used to kill a
monster, causing the spurt of blood that had dyed the image
for a moment.
Sally pushed one pigtail back over her shoulder.
"So, you *can* shoot," the pigtailed boy standing
beside her commented.
The light before her died.
"There," the girl behind her commented. "As you can
see, they're all okay. They're all happy."
Lucrezia whirled on her heel. "How can you say that!?
They were happy before!"
"Were they?" the young woman asked.
"Yes, they were!"
The other shook her head. "Would you prefer them to
go mad? Or to die?" At Lucrezia's incredulous look, she
sighed. "There are those who would prefer them to be - out of
the way. They will remove them - or I can ensure they're gone
before the necessity arises. Which would you prefer - this or a
funeral?"
Lucrezia shook her head. "That can't be... who could
do that?"
The other woman smiled sadly. "Shouldn't the question
be, 'how did *you* do that'?" She shrugged. "But... what shall
I do with you?"
Lucrezia's eyes widened as the young woman turned
back to her laptop.
"Hmm... yes that'll do, but how will I get the romantic
factor... I can do *that* but... oh, screw the timeline, Gods
know I already am..."
The glowing disc sprang to life behind Lucrezia,
wrapping around her and pulling her within itself. She opened
her mouth to scream...
"Sailor Mercury, are you okay?" Sailor Jupiter
demanded.
"Uh... yes," Mercury replied. Why *had* she screamed?
It was just another ordinary old youma attack, like always,
wasn't it?
Inside her, memories struggled to be heard - memories
of flying robots, a war, and a hopeless love she had lived with
for years - but were drowned in the inflood of the memories of
fourteen peaceful years and sudden realization of power.
"Sailor Mercury! You aren't hurt?" Blue Kamen asked
worriedly. She looked at him, smiled, and shook her head
slowly as he sighed with relief. She shook her head again.
Where *had* she gotten the idea that her own Blue Kamen,
loyal servant and warrior-guardian of Tuxedo Kamen, had
been captured by the Black Kingdom, brainwashed and
renamed 'Zoicite'? What a silly idea!
"Don't worry," she said, smiling into sea-blue eyes, "I'm
fine," as the last memories of a pair of sky-coloured eyes were
washed away by the affection within those eyes, looking into
her own. "Now, let's get rid of these Dark Kingdom *creeps*!"
+++++++++++++
The young woman smiled at the scene on her monitor.
"You do know you've screwed up *my* timeline."
"Hello, Sailor Pluto. Would you like some tea?" the
woman asked, looking up.
"No, thank you," replied Pluto. "I am very unhappy with
you, Raye. Didn't you just say you were doing this for your
fellow yaoi writers?"
The younger woman shrugged. "There's already two
timelines in Sailor Moon, and one precludes Zoicite and
Kunzite having a sexual relationship. That's the one I
changed. Besides, they still have Haruka and Michiru to play
with."
Pluto's lips twitched. "I hardly think they will consider
that fair exchange."
Raye laughed. "Every fan has his or her own timeline
for Sailor Moon. If I alter mine, it will not affect theirs - and I
think Noin deserves a break. If you won't join me for tea -
how about dinner?"
"Associating with *you* after what you've just done?
People will think I condone it."
"I know a great Peking Chinese restaurant..."
"But I do wish to speak to you about your continued
interference in *my* timelines..."
"... And I'll pay."
"... So I believe I will accept your invitation."
The two forms vanished, leaving only the mountain,
the clouds and the sky.
**************************
The Rest Of The Disclaimer:
Or, How Many Did You Get Right?
Relena ended up in Battle Atheletes Victory, currently being
brought out in America by Pioneer. All rights belong to the
original holders, of which I am NOT one.
Hilde is currently starring in The Five Star Stories, which is a
magnificent manga and a very good movie. Nagano
Mamoru-sama, the author of the Five Star Stories, holds the
copyrights to this wonderful story, and Kadokawa Haruki
produced the anime.
Catherine is having fun being the Mysterious Thief Saint Tail,
who was thought up by her Author. Not me. The manga was
published by Nakayoshi, the anime was brought out by Studio
Perriot and is fansubbed by a number of people.
Sally, having merged lives with Fuu from Magic Knights
Rayearth, now owes her existence to CLAMP, who hold all
rights pertaining to their work.
And Lucrezia Noin, now Sailor Mercury, is coping with the
other magnificent creations of Naoko Takeuchi, who holds the
rights to all of *them*.
*********************************