I said I wasn't going to do this. I was wrong.
Having posted 'Sailor V Redux' I got enough complaints about
not contiuning it that well...it's going to be continued.
Disclaimer
Sailor Moon, Lain, X-1999, Twin Signal, Gold digger, Ranma 1/2
etc all belong to their respective creators, not me.
Jack Staik, origionator of the Sailor Moon Redux concept short
which I am so thourghly twisting, has given me his blessing so
Nyah Nyah :p
X-1999/Lain/Twin Signal/Gold Digger/Ranma 1/2
Sailor Moon
Senshi Redux interlude
'The night after the day before'
���� Usagi yawned hugely as she stumbled into her room in the
Kumon�s impromptu home; An efficiency apartment divided by a screen
and lit by candles rather than electric lights at the moment. Not
much but it was what she had. It didn�t matter that she and Ryu
both worked part time as well as training, they never seemed
to make quite enough money to make ends meet, and the kitchen
would likely be bare, so eating was out of the question; �Too
tired for food anyway,� she muttered under her breath�� those
monsters had been tough, far more so than usually so and she
was carrying herself home with the air of the almost completely
exhausted.��
���� So tired was she that she almost didn�t notice the note
stuck to the table which read�
Usa�
����� Have a lead on the Satome�s in Nerima.� Checking it out.��
����� Back later.
����� Food in the fridge.� Take care.
����������� -Ryu
����� Blinking through a haze of near exhaustion, she decided that
food might be a good idea after all, at least as a prelude to
pulling her adoptive brother�s fat out of the fire.
����� �Dammit Ryu, now is NOT the time to be chasing up trees
looking for a man we know was headed to china�� She muttered, and
then set about demolishing the sandwich fixings in the small
apartment.
����� Twenty minutes later, Usagi Tsuinko was out the door and
headed across the rooftops towards a meeting with destiny, Chinese
Amazons, a Big Ass Spatula, and more chaos than a Nermina movie
theater could possibly contain.
����� But that�s a story for another time.
************************************************************************
���� Makoto Kino hummed a happy little ditty as she maneuvered a
bushel of groceries into her apartment� all that fighting made
her HUNGRY and she planed on fixing and then demolishing a great deal
of the food in short order.
���� Other than a few bruises and scrapes (and a six inch long
slash wound on her lower back that was currently numb courtesy a
strong dose of local anesthetic to go with the stitches), she�d gotten
off fairly lightly in the fighting� but then, her powers were suited
for that.�� She just needed to remember that she wasn�t completely
invulnerable.
����� Packing the fixings away into the fridge, she continued
humming as she sorted through her mail� �Bill, Bill, junk, junk,
grades� ick� Postcard from Theodore Diggers? What�s this about���
The card showed a country home in autumn with an older man and two
young girls standing before it waving.� Turning the card over she
squinted at the� nearly invisible Kanji and raised an eyebrow.��
�Huh?� An invitation to come visit? Why would �
����� Makoto cut off suddenly, a lump in her throat as she continued
to read.
����� Dearest Makoto�
����� It is with a great joy and great shame that I finally
communicate this to you, as I have dishonored my own family
greatly by not finding your predicament sooner;�� When your
parents died I had assumed that you had been with them, and
mourned the passage of yet another of my family;� Your father
was a great man and a great friend of mine, and the loss of
your mother, my sister, has left a hole in my life I cannot
truly express the depths of.���
����� You can imagine then, my shock to find from an
aquainance in the Japanese Spiritual community that you still
lived and were struggling to keep yourself housed alone in
Tokyo.�
����� I have endeavored to add those holdings of your parents as
remained overseas to your trust fund, that you might be more
personally independent. These monies are your right, and I advise you
to put them to use in completing a course of study at one of
the collages available to you, and if you have need will provide
such references as a retired professor can.�� Should you desire
to humor an old man and come to visit� or stay as long as you
like� we may be reached any time at the number below.�� Should
you not desire to travel so extensively, I myself have been
known to visit Tokyo from time to time, and can be found on those
occasions at the American Embassy.
���� I shall certainly endeavor to make you aware of those
Occasions for my visitations as they arise.
����� Affectionately yours,
����� Theodore Diggers
����� ��Oji?� I..have an Uncle? And he wants to meet me?��� The
groceries went untouched that night, as Makoto forgot hunger
completely. For a long while she could not bring herself to
tear her eyes from the photo on the postcard, a link to family
she had not even known she had.��
����� When finally she managed to gather thought again, her hand
reached swiftly for the phone.
************************************************************************
����� Rei sighed and moped a hand across her forehead, clearing away
sweat.�� The steps of the temple and the grounds were finally clean,
though it had taken her an afternoon's entirety and on into the evening
to brush away the ash-dust that was the remnants of the small army of
Youma that had attacked them. The stuff was fine like silt and
difficult to move using mundane means, and despite the increase of
power that allowed her to accomplish so much, she preferred to clean her
temple using the old fashioned method of a broom and muscle power.��
����� It was somehow more...honest.
����� There was also the fact that she barley had the spiritual
reserves to cast ofuda at the moment; After holding off a fifth of
demon army with nothing but her own power she was almost completely
tapped out.
����� As she headed back to the temple for sleep, the something that
had been bothering her all afternoon decided finally to make itself
felt, and Rei sighed as she gave up on sleep as a lost cause.
����� <Kami�s.� Pray let me sleep sometime tonight.>�� Padding down
the steps swiftly, she met her visitor at the gate with a smile and
then a gasp;
����� A man in his early twenties in the garb of a Shinto Priest,
he was an extraordinarily handsome young man, having grown mostly out
of the effiminity of his adolescent years, but the many rents in his
clothes the blood that dripped from him onto the shrine steps somewhat
ruined the effect.����
����� �Kami�s� Sumeragi Sensei� what happened to� No, this is no
time for me questioning you.�� Here, let me get you into the shrine
and we�ll deal with these wounds.�� Wearily heaving her occasional
teacher in the spiritual arts up from his kneeling stance and
bracing him with an arm about one shoulder she turned them both
towards the steps to the fire shrine.���
����� It was obviously going to be one of those days.
����� As they made their labored way up the last few steps, she idly
wondered who of the spiritual community she could call on for aid,
and which, if any of the Senshi would be available to guard them
while she rendered aid to the man who had all but raised her when
her grandfather had passed away leaving the shrine to her.
����� Because she could tell� from the tears of heartbreak in
his eyes, and the many, many shallow cuts that covered his body,
that Subaru Sumeragi was going to be in no condition to be guarding
anything for some time.
********************************************************************
����� Ami washed down a small fistful of pills with a huge gulp
of water and shuddered; That handful had consisted of much aspirin
(four, extra strength, to help arrest her raging migraine, brought on
by badly overtaxing her psionic abilities), uncoated, along with the
vitamins she needed to replenish her bodies wrecked nutrient balance
and the imuno-boosters to help make sure she didn�t come down with
anything due to the stress she was putting on her body.��
����� It tasted horrible.� It was probably worse nutrition, dispite the
Contents of the vitamin pills.
����� The next handful of substance she forced herself to swallow
wasn�t much better, but she needed the carbohydrates and sugars as
well.� Unfortunately the Mizuno larder was rather spare at the
moment, and� Wasabi coated yam chips were a snack she hated.
Her mother swore by them, though,�likely because they tasted horrible,
using the particular twisted logic of a Trauma Doctor that said
if the food was hard enough to swallow, it might just stay down no
matter what the next patient looked like.
����� After that she slapped a eyecover over her face and buried
her head beneath her pillow, waiting for the agony she was currently
suffering to pass.����
����� Unfortunate that she hadn�t been able to find any sleeping
pills; A nice nap while this passed would have been �just what the
doctor ordered�.
����� On the other side of the room, the queries she had made about
certain matters began garnering swift answers that were collected
in her private files, and while her custom modified Navi compiled
them, the smaller case of the Mercury computer sang its own powerful
song, gathering much information about those who replied to her.��
����� Some of those who habitually conversed with her were already
Ongoing research projects.�� Especially one in particular.
����� From: Lain@wired
����� To: Mercury@millenium.org
����� Re: Aino Minako
*********************************************************************
����� A scientist, a meeting, a little girl, an experiment -
����� "-for coming here today to see the unveiling of the first product of
the Numbers project, A-A Atrandom -"
����� A silver-blue haired not-man in the grips of savage madness..
����� "Daddy! Daddy!� The pretty man is angry!"
����� "Minako get away from him - NO! MINA~!"
����� A special day gone horribly wrong.
����� "Mina. Mina can you hear me?"
����� "Daddy, I can't move.� My legs don't work."
����� The same girl in a hospital bed� if the hospital were run by mad
scientist, hooked up to a small nest of iv-tubes.� A young man is working
with a set of equipment next to her nest of life preserving machines..a
feeling of pain and fear
����� "This is just a test Mina, to see if this will help your body
heal."
����� "Okay daddy.�� The little machines look funny in the tubes,
though."
����� "They're carrying the nanites to the parts of your body they need to
fix,
Mina."
����� "Daddy?� Daddy it hurts.� Daddy I'm burning! Make it stop, it
hurts!"
����� "I know it does honey. I know."
����� "AIIIIIEEEE!!"
����� "God Help us both."
����� A meeting of minds, five of the most gifted robot engineers
in the world siting at a table in a place called Leukyon..a vision
of them that holds nothing but dispassionate observance, as if they
amounted to nothing but columns of numbers.
����� "-know if the project can be salvaged.� The virtuals - A-C and A-
D - are not enough for a confirmation of a real world test run - his
virtual was stable too. After what happened with A-B we may need to
shelve the project."
����� "You will not.� Gentlemen, Ladies I am pleased to announce that
the Project will continue - and that it is a success.�� May I introduce
the first successful Atrandom Number, Experimental A-E Erosu.�
Minako-chan, Please wake up. The nice men would like to see you."
����� A dark haired woman screaming a the young man, but it was like
Looking at a still picture for all the emotion she felt, though she
Watched their obvious rage, grief and fear from only a few feet away.
����� "You - You bastard! You expect me to accept a fake - a machine -
as our daughters replacement!?"
����� "NO!� This IS Minako! Do you understand?� This is our daughter.��
It was the only way to save her!� She's no less than she was - in fact
she's more!"
����� A feeling of sympathetic pain from him to herself, the first
feeling in a long time, as if she were awakening from sleep�
����� "Kaasan. Tousan. Please don't fight.�� I'm not worth fighting
over."
����� In the early predawn, Minako breathed the words softly, echoing the
recurrent nightmare, and knew that restful sleep was going to be less
than common in the days to come.��� She hadn't had that particular
nightmare in years, and now it was coming back, on top of the other
dreams of death and blood from her first life, all those many aeons
ago, and on top of the dreams of the last year as Sailor V - the dreams
where the enemies she had destroyed begged her to spare them or dammed
her as a murderess.
����� No, sleep didn't seem like it would be very restful at all, for
quite some time to come.
����� Frowning softly she sat up and quickly dressed in a teashirt and
jeans before slipping out the window into the midnight semi-dark of
Tokyo.����
����� If she couldn�t sleep, then at least she�d get something
productive done, and it would take a lot of patrolling to find the lairs
of those who had sent Youma and such after her and her sisters this
past day.
Gamlain, transuniversal courier & Hero for rent
Sheldon Burnham gamlain@airmail.net��
<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/8762/index.html>Http://www.geocities.co
m/Tokyo/Bay/8762/index.html
"Obstacles are for killing."� Xian Pu, Ranma 1/2 volume 1.
Gamlain, transuniversal courier & Hero for rent
Sheldon Burnham gamlain@airmail.net
Http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/8762/index.html
"Obstacles are for killing." Xian Pu, Ranma 1/2 volume 1.